Mereka tidak melakukan apa pun kecuali menghitung butiran tasbih dan memamerkan hafalan isi kitab yang ditulis dalam bahasa yang tidak mereka pahami. Kuharap Tuhan melindungi kita semua jika suatu saat nanti Afganistan jatuh ke tangan mereka.
For courage, there must be something at stake.
Of course, it wouldn’t have happened if Mammy had shown up like she was supposed to either. Sometimes Laila wondered why Mammy had even bothered having her. People, she believed now, shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair.
I was glad I didn’t have to return his gaze. Did he know I knew? And if he knew, then what would I see if I did look in his eyes? Blame? Indignation? Or, God forbid, what I feared most: guileless devotion?
So much had happened since those childhood days, so much that needed to be said. But that first night the enormity of it all stole the words from her. That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left.
My dear Martin, in the long summer of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfather’s farmhouse outside of Homs.
That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left.
Time is the most unforgiving of fires.
Tak ada tindakan yang lebih buruk daripada mencuri. Orang yang mengambil sesuatu yang bukan haknya, baik itu kehidupan orang lain ataupun sepotong naan.
The truth was no. The lie was yes. I settled for something in between. “I don’t know.
The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan with a leather cowboy hat just like the one Clint Eastwood wore in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – which had unseated The Magnificent Seven as our favorite Western.
Mereka bernasib naas, memiliki ayah yang lemah. Seorang pengecut yang lebih memilih melihat mereka semua mati daripada menyiksa nuraninya sendiri.
Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.
It was Homaira and me against the world. And I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.
Tidak ada salahnya menjadi seorang pengecut selama kau tetap berhati-hati. Tapi bila seorang pengecut mulai melupakan siapa dirinya... Semoga Tuhan melindunginya.
It was the way Nana uttered the word – not so much saying it as spitting it at her – that made Mariam feel the full sting of it.
I promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened Baba’s joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still hadn’t had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.
Seseorang yang sebelumnya menyemir sepatumu, tidak mungkin menjadi ‘saudara perempuanmu’ keesokan harinya.
Kami meninggalkan mayat-mayat itu di jalan, dan kalau keluarga mereka mencoba menyelinap untuk menyeret kembali mayat-mayat itu ke rumah mereka, kami tak akan ragu menembak mereka. Kami membiarkan mayat-mayat itu menjadi santapan anjing. Daging anjing hanya cocok untuk anjing.
She has intelligent, flirtatious eyes, and a penetrating gaze under which one feels simultaneously appraised, tested, charmed, toyed with. They remain, I suspect, a redoubtable seduction tool.