''Before I die, I want to see where I was born,'' my father announced last fall at home in Katonah, New York, as our family celebrated Diwali, the Hindu New Year. With that, my parents and I began planning a trip to Pakistan. My father and his entire extended family fled there in 1947, when India gained independence and was divided into Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India. This was not a trip we expected to take. My father's family left Lahore, where they thought they would live all their lives, after what the departing British had envisioned as an orderly exchange of minority populations exploded into a cycle of brutality and retaliation that engulfed both new countries. They went first to Delhi, arriving with only what they could carry. My father, then 5 years old, remembers the tense train ride and the family's subsequent hardships as refugees with nothing. As adults, my parents joined the Indian diaspora, raising me and my older brother in Sudan, then Abu Dhabi, and finally New York. We have all been Americans for more than a decade. Until that day last November, I had rarely heard Dad talk about the partition. It was a topic I knew I shouldn't bring up. But now, nearly 60 years later, it has been captured by the zeitgeist of a generation: Across India and Pakistan, survivors of Partition are taking one last chance to reconcile their conflicting memories – of terrified displacement, but also of shared wealth. culture that had to be left behind. Peacemaking between India and Pakistan has become a trend. Chanting symbolic statements, film stars and members of parliament are crossing the border into the dusty Wagah guard post. Since last month, the Pakistan national cricket team has been touring across India, bringing with them thousands of cricket-loving fans and has been greeted with warm hospitality, reciprocating Pakistani hospitality when the Indian team broke the ice by touring Pakistan last year. taught for decades to see others as enemies who truly unite? We wondered, in this age of war on terrorism, whether it would be worse to travel to Pakistan as an Indian or as an American. Flying from Delhi to Lahore after a first stopover in India, I was surprised to see the plane full of mostly older people, both Indian and Pakistani..