In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture. Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. People aren't listening to poetry as if they're taking their vitamins. Instead, it's a popular vessel you can fill with anything. You could fill it with sass. You could fill it with rage. You could fill it with political statements.

News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

Speculation is a fool's game, but I've seen many political projections that look like the Taliban could hold most of the country, and possibly Kabul, within perhaps a short time.

The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice.

I was examining what religious identity meant in Africa. Along the edge of the Islamic world, what patterns were shaping identity? And the truth is, when I looked at the rise of violent forms of religion, no single identity was prevalent. It's central to note that in Nigeria, that tree is rooted primarily in Christianity. It's not just Islamic militants in the Middle Belt.

I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's.

One of the things about landays is that they thrive in a modern context. Early on I went to this incredible Pashtun novelist, Mustafa Salik, who is a bestselling novelist in Afghanistan and works for the BBC in Pashto. With the question of the sanctity of the poems in mind, I asked him, "Aren't you worried? They've been posted on Facebook and such." And he said, "Just the opposite. This is a folk form; they survive and thrive as people share them."