(BBC) – The elderly grimace, hobbling on crutches, and wide-eyed children stare, cradling chickens carried from homes they were forced to leave behind.
“It feels good to be in my own country,” 35-year-old Nazia says, just minutes after she crosses from Pakistan, where she was born, into Afghanistan.
The Torkham crossing, known as “Zero Point”, is where one hard life ends and another begins.
“But I’ve never been to Afghanistan before and many people here don’t even have enough bread to eat,” Nazia sighs as she heads, two of her children in tow, toward registration counters festooned with white and black Taliban flags.
Nearly her entire family, eight sisters and their offspring, were deported to Afghanistan this year from Pakistan or Iran.
They are part of the biggest cross-border movement of people anywhere in the world.
