CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti — Over the years, I’ve been asked to name my favorite possession. My answer seems to surprise people. It’s not a car. It’s not a house. It’s not a piece of memorabilia, like a signed baseball bat, nor a work of art or a family heirloom.

It’s my passport.

Or passports, now. I’ve had multiple ones. I’ve kept them all. They are rubber-banded in a drawer, and once in a while, I look through them, as I am looking through my current passport as I write this, traveling through Haiti.

My original passport, from the 1970s, has a teenage photo of myself, looking serious in a turtleneck, my long hair covering my ears. It contains a stamp of my first-ever overseas trip, to France, with my father and mother, when I was still in high school. It was a business trip and they took me

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