Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.

For you, a thousand times over

If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.

There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.

I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.