Pakistan, Nov. 11 -- There is a loneliness to an American winter that no one prepares you for. It arrives before the snow, sometime between the clocks going back and the first evening you realise it is dark at five. The streets are immaculate, the lawns are trimmed, and every house glows behind its closed windows. This country has mastered keeping people comfortable and apart. Back home, a neighbour might have appeared uninvited with a piping hot plate of gajar ka halwa and a grievance or two about the government. Here, turning up at someone's doorstep unannounced is almost unimaginable. At times, I feel immigrants miss the inconvenience of other people. The doorbell that rings at the wrong hour. The friend who insists that one more cup o...