The first person I told we were going was a worker at CVS. We had forgotten to get photos before applying for our visa. As the lady pulled down the dull blue background and messed with the settings on her camera, she made small talk and asked us where we were headed to. My wife and brother-in-law looked at each other.

“Pakistan!” I yelled with a smile.

Her face dropped; her eyes wrestling the thoughts welling inside of her. “Why?” She ended up muttering.

When you bring up Pakistan in Texas, most people tend to think of terrorism, of desert, of violence. Most people think of images briefly flashed on a television screen nearly a decade ago. What is lost from those images is a culture with roots so deep it blossoms in daily life in myriad colors; a landscape that reaches from the Himalayas through forest and grassland to the rugged southern coast; a place where the art is found in the small details of the day. One could spend a lifetime there and still barely scratch the surface.

Ours was a different trip though. For me, it started a few months ago. For my wife, this was something 25 years in the making. She was born to a Pakistani immigrant who found his way to Texas and a mother who found her way there from the Midwest. For her it was a country that shaped her, yet one she knew almost nothing of. When her father passed away last year, another life was opened up. People related by the names they shared, who had spoke only on deaths and weddings, became family and friends. The visit that should have been made years ago was planned, and six months later we were on a flight from Istanbul to Lahore.

The fog weighed heavy over the city as we descended. The lights below simmering beneath us. As we came down on the runway, the cover broke to reveal streetlamps knotted endlessly to the horizon.

It was about 4 a.m. Outside, the air was crisp and smelled leaves and motor oil. We walked under the “Welcome to Pakistan” banner hanging over the door and into the early morning. In an instant my family more than doubled in size. Three generations, four different branches that formed the story of my wife were waiting for us.

My family has never been close beyond the small circle of my parents and brother. Most live more than halfway across the country. I never knew great-grandparents, second and third cousins, or spent summers at family reunions. In Pakistan, family is everything; and despite skin color or geography these people waiting in the cold and quiet hours of late-December were now mine. It was as if the oceans and years separating us never existed.

Lost from most of the talk about Pakistan is love - for family, for fellow man, for country. Instead, coverage focuses on the work of a few who seek violence and death. There is a saying in Pakistan that states something like, “we must all make sacrifices for the country we have created.” There is a real sense of working together, of being a part something that you shape and are shaped by. Pakistan is society that can still sit on a handshake and the power of one’s word. On the streets of Lahore I never once encountered hatred or a situation that made me uncomfortable, only people proud to share their work, their home, the land that has shaped them and their culture.

As the morning light lifted the fog and the city from its sleep, we arrived at the house that, had he stayed, would have belonged to my wife’s father. Being the only son of the family left in the country, the property and responsibility fell to his brother.

The house is a sandy-brown, three-story structure in the Islamia Park neighborhood of northeastern Lahore. Surrounded by a cemetery and down a narrow alley, the area seems quite compared to the markets of New Town and Anarkali. Undetached, the house fills the space between other concrete buildings. Inside, it is filled with three generations of a family.

Like nearly every other day, we sat down here for a breakfast of egg, breads and, of course, tea. Conversation flowed as if it had always been that way. There is a certain obligation amongst family to get along, to love each other. The cards sent on birthdays; the phone calls made on certain holidays. However, the bonds of blood only dictate a vague concept. They do not require you to take two weeks off of work. They do not require you to welcome a stranger into your home as if you have known them all your life. But in Lahore, and I would assume this holds true throughout the country, family means more than kindness and a cup of tea, and even guests are quickly made into members of the family.

A few days later, we took a walk with some cousins and grandma around the neighborhood. Intimate scenes play out in streets. Old women gather at the corner to talk about the newest gossip. A man argues with friends about how best to fix a broken motorbike. Around the corner, a balloon seller announces his arrival with a shrill toy trumpet as the colors of his stock burst into blossom against the muted tan of the bricks and concrete. We are walking with grandma, who though she needs support still makes her rounds of the neighborhood each day, as she tells us the history of each family and the place they inhabit. Born into this land when it still went by another name, she seems as much a part of the neighborhood as the rows of houses and stones on the street. She leads us to a house nearly indistinguishable from the ones that surround it, except for tiled steps leading to the door to meet one of her friends. She smiles as she introduces her three grandchildren, as if the fact that I am only here because I married the right woman does nothing to diminish the fact that I am family. There is a sense of pride in us, in the lives she created and futures she is a part of.

We are greeted with hugs, with cups of tea and plates of food. Flavor does not need a name to taste good. Love does not need words to convey. Despite languages that separate the distance between our chairs, the feelings are not lost. Meaning - "I am happy to meet you;" "welcome to my home; "may God bless you" - is understood, even if the words for it are different. We are not allowed to leave without a promise to return to meet her children and to share a meal soon.

Pakistan, without the mention of the people that make this place, is nothing. And the foundation of its people is family. A quick glance at the news or the State Department's website will give you a number of reasons to be wary of visiting, but these say nothing of the hundreds of millions who believe in the country and who make their way through life, as we all do, the best they can. In this place you will find an equal number of stories, and if you make it here, you will find a people who are willing to make you a part of theirs.