In many parts of the world, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.
For you, a thousand times over.
Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.
He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.
I’m all you have in this world Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You ARE nothing!
If there’s a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.
I don’t know what this feather means, the story of it, but I know it means he was thinking of me. For all these years. He remembered me.
The experience of writing ‘The Kite Runner’ is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.
I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.
There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.
Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for most part has been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.
And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.
But the game involves only male names. Because, if it’s a girl, Laila has already named her.
I’ll die if you go. The Jinn will come, and I’ll have one of my fits. You’ll see, I’ll swallow my tongue and die. Don’t leave me, Mariam jo. Please stay. I’ll die if you go.
I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.
Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive, Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not.
I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.
He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew that I’d betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.
She would grab whatever she could -a look, a whisper, a moan – to salvage from perishing, to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires, and she couldn’t, in the end, save it all .