Nearly 46 years after a mob overran the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, sisters Eileen Woods Schreiber of Newport and Lisa Woods Dougherty of the Philadelphia area remember the smell of smoke, the silence of missing voices and the way a routine Wednesday became a line that split their childhoods in two.

On Nov. 21, 1979, the sisters were teenagers living in Islamabad, where their father, U.S. Army Col. George Woods, served as the U.S. defense attaché. Their mother taught at the American-run International School. What began like any school day quickly unraveled into hours of fear and confusion as thousands of demonstrators surged over the embassy’s walls, set vehicles ablaze and forced American personnel to retreat to a secure “vault” on the building’s top floors.

“We were used to de

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