Rather than restricting themselves to the study of isolated tribes and peasant villages, anthropologists have begun to study peoples who are culturally displaced, refugees, diasporic groups, people without territorial homelands, and immigrants. Such groups are increasingly prominent today in the aftermath of local wars, interethnic conflict, and economic globalization. In the context of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent Afghan Civil War, many from that country have left for other parts of the world, including neighboring Pakistan, other Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the United States. When I began conducting ethnographic research in Afghanistan in 1976, I did not realize what political, social, and economic upheavals were in store for the ethnic community I studied. Like other Afghans, community members became refugees and later immigrants to other countries; in many cases, however, they maintained kinship, social, religious, and economic ties to relatives in various parts of the world, forming a transnational community in which people, money, commodities, and information circulate. Discussions of transnationalism frequently begin with the cultural dynamics of deterritorialization, which is viewed as a kind of postmodern decentering and as such is elevated by many critical theorists. Writing from a feminist perspective, Kamala Visweswaran suggests that this view of deterritorialization ignores both the oppressive political forces that may have unleashed deterritorialization and the personal pain of those who lack a sense of belonging anywhere, in essence, who lack a home.' Visweswaran's insight certainly holds true for the Afghans I have known. They live a complex existence that forces them to confront, draw upon, and rework different identity constructsnational, ethnic, racial, class, and religious.2 Identity rearticulation may be particularly difficult for those who come to the United States from traditional Muslim backgrounds and may focus on gender issues, particularly in relation to marriage and the