I thought returning home after four decades would mean confronting old memories.

I expected the streets to look different. I expected the house to feel smaller. I expected grief, perhaps regret, and the strange sensation of walking through places that had remained frozen in my mind since I was 19 years old.

What I didn’t expect was to walk out of the arrivals hall in Casablanca and find three police cars waiting for me.

Two uniformed officers stood beside the vehicles.

A third officer was holding my passport.

Then he looked at me.

“We’ve been expecting you.”

For a second, I thought I’d misunderstood him.

I had just stepped outside after nearly 40 years away.

Around me, the airport was filled with the ordinary chaos of arriving passengers.

Families embraced.

Drivers held signs.

Children climbed into the arms of grandparents they hadn’t seen in months.

People hurried toward waiting cars.

And in the middle of all of it stood a 60-year-old woman beside a suitcase, suddenly wondering whether something she had done at 19 had finally followed her across an ocean.

“Expecting me?” I asked.

The officer looked down at my passport again.

Then back at my face.

“Samira?”

My stomach tightened.

“Yes.”

“Please come with us.”

My hand tightened around the handle of my suitcase.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

“Then why are there three police cars?”

The officer hesitated.

He opened the rear door of one of the vehicles.

“We need to take you somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Please.”

That single word frightened me more than an order would have.

I looked at the cars.

Then at the officer.

And suddenly, after all those years, I felt 19 again.