Until today, I had never really pondered what it must be like to be forced, in one way or another, to permanently leave your home. And by home, I don’t mean a house, a neighborhood, a town or even a state. I mean the country in which you were born, raised and put down roots. The country that provided, for better or worse, the legal, educational and social structure under which you matured. The place that holds your family and friends. The site of all your hopes and dreams, as well as the site of your sorrows and regrets. The culture that defines who you are.

We’ve all heard endless stories of the plight of refugees in various parts of the world, but, for me at least, these stories have all too often been simply a series of numbers. Numbers for whom I held a level of sympathy; numbers for whom I truly felt some level of pain over their suffering; but numbers with which I never, on a visceral level, connected.

For some time, I have been visiting Baghdad Burning, an Internet Blog written by a young Iraqi girl in Baghdad who goes by the pseudonym of “Riverbend” to maintain her anonymity. She is exceptionally well spoken, highly intelligent and extremely fluent in English. There is some belief she was a computer programmer before the war.

Riverbend is an Iraqi who does not advocate one side or another, although she is critical of the U.S. puppets who now govern her country. She states that before the U.S.-installed Maliki government, whether a person was Sunni or Shia was not something about which people bothered, and it was generally considered in poor taste to inquire after a neighbor’s Sunni/Shia leanings. What she does advocate is the withdrawal of U.S. troops from her homeland.

Her posts are few and sometimes far between, which isn’t exactly surprising. When one considers the scarcity of electricity and the poor communications facilities available to Iraqi citizens, the amazing thing is that she can manage to publish any information at all.

In her latest post, Riverbend speaks of her family’s decision to leave Iraq and the difficulties that lie ahead in executing this decision, which discourse has caused me to focus, really focus, for the first time in my life on what it must be like to face abandoning one’s homeland with little prospect of ever returning.

There are two basic motivations, not necessarily mutually exclusive, for giving up one’s homeland – escape and hope. Escape from persecution; escape from economic and environmental conditions that have made life untenable; escape from the unspeakable atrocities of a war that offers no glimpse of ever ending. Hope for improving one’s life; hope for providing a better future for one’s children; hope for survival.

In the end, the decision may not be a decision at all but a course of action dictated by external forces. However, in the case of our Iraqi friend, the decision to leave has been made after weighing the alternatives and making a conscience, although definitely not free, choice. Now, she and her family face the logistics of leaving.

Flight can never be easy, but it must be especially difficult when you don’t know what waits at the other end. Or, even worse, don’t even know where the other end lies.

In the case of those attempting to flee Iraq, the only two possible immediate destinations are Syria and Jordan. Any other country requires a visa and obtaining one from inside Iraq is virtually impossible under the current conditions.

Getting to either Syria or Jordan from Baghdad is no small feat. Two modes of transportation are available – car or airplane. Each holds its own set of risks.

Driving is a trip of, roughly, 400 miles to either the Syrian or Jordanian border. I can only imagine the dangers and challenges such a trip would entail – passing through areas populated by insurgents, questionable availability of gasoline, food and water and the ever present danger of a variety of explosives that may dot the path.

Assuming one successfully transits this not-so-yellow-brick road and arrives at the border, there is no guarantee passage into either Syria or Jordan will be possible. Thousands of Iraqis have been turned back at the border, often simply on the whim of a border guard.

Flying would certainly seem the safer course, as one would expect a plane would be certain to have enough fuel on board to reach its destination before it departed Baghdad. But how difficult is it to book passage on a plane out of Baghdad? And even if one can get a reservation for a flight to Amman or Damascus, as Riverbend puts it, the trip to the Baghdad airport is, itself, quite risky.

Finally, arriving by plane provides no more assurance refugees will be allowed to enter either Jordan or Syria than they would be allowed to cross the border into either country.

Assuming Riverbend and her family successfully reach either Jordan or Syria, the question then becomes, “Where next?” For with the large number of Iraqi refugees, getting work in either country is largely impossible and any hope of being granted permanent residency is so remote as to be virtually non-existent. But getting to one of these countries at least opens the possibility of being able to move on to another country, one where work can be found and residency can be had until, if ever, it becomes possible to return home.

So what do all of those Iraqis who were going to welcome us with open arms as their liberators now think when they have to decide to leave their homeland? How can they help but blame us for the pain of their displacement?

Godspeed, Riverbend.