Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything – that is how, it is between people who are each other’s first memories.
Mariam always held her breath as she watched him go. She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second that she didn’t breathe God would grant her another day with Jalil.
He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he’s wrong. War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.
But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you.
If the story had been about anyone else, it would been dismissed as laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate – sadly, almost a national affliction; if someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once passed a biology test in high school.
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts. Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.
But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,′ she said, ’then Hakim is your man.
She considers for a minute before saying, “I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that. I should have been more kind.
Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.
When you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.
A life lived from the back seat, observed as it blured by. An indifferent life.
To see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things.
Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq’s father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq’s absence or presence.
Por ti lo haria mil veces mas.
Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time.
When guilt leads to good.
She remembered all too well how time had dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feeling waylaid, out of balance. How shr could ever cope with his permanent absence?
Mammy’s heart was like a pallid beach where Laila’s footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed.
Make morning into a key and throw it into the well, go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. let the morning sun forget to rise in the east, go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.
He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn’t. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes.