When the rest of the family came to America, Fozia says it was the business-minded Mahmoud—the only one of her seven brothers not interested in politics—to get the family on its feet.

“I don’t know where he got the idea of starting restaurants,” says Karzai, “but he’s the business man in the family, and that’s what he thought we should do.”

The first “Helmand” restaurant—named after a river in Afghanistan—opened in Baltimore around 15 years ago. Since then, the family’s restaurant holdings have come to include locations from San Francisco to Cambridge.

But despite her successful acclimation to America, Karzai says she is looking forward to returning permanently to Afghanistan with her husband and three daughters.

She says the country’s delicate political situation will not allow the whole family to move back to Afghanistan together.

“First my husband wants to go, then I will,” Karzai says. “We can’t both go back at the same time, because it’s dangerous and for the kids, it’s very difficult.”

Karzai says she returned to Afghanistan for a single night last year to visit her father’s grave.

She describes the brief visit as a painful experience.

“I’d see the people walking as a ghost,” she says. “They have no joy.”

But as she talks, Karzai is interrupted by a restaurant employee who comes up behind her to ask if he is free to leave for the day. Karzai looks at him sternly before agreeing to let him go.

These days, the restaurant and its employees are her main concern.

“I don’t do any of the cooking, so I have to come in and taste the food every afternoon,” she says of her restaurant duties.

“That’s a nice job,” she says.

—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.