He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the first thing I saw. And I can’t lie now and say my eyes didn’t scan it for any rips.
I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But i didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lip. I ran.
Blood is a powerful thing.
America was different. America was a river, roarng along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.
The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.
Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.
There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.
No one has to know. No one would. It would be her secret, one she would share with the mountains only. The question is whether it is a secret she can live with, and Parwana thinks she knows the answer. She has lived with secrets all her life.
Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.
It was you Nabi. It was always you. Didn’t you know?
You say their stories, it is gift they give you.
When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.
Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.
I may not agree with all or even most of the tribal traditions, but it seems ti me that, out there, people live more authentic lives. They have a sturdiness about them. A refreshing humility. Hospitality too. And resilience. A sense of pride.
People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don’t they? Like a badge? I’m being genuine.
The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me.
Gone. Vanished. Nothing left. Nothing said.
In Afghanistan, you don’t understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.
In her smile, Idris sees how little of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its cruelty, its boundless brutality.
The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don’t like to read.