Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.” “Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

Educate yourself, learn about what refugees face when they don't have homes, after they have lost everything.

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.

As far as I know, he never asked where she had been or why she had left and she never told. I guess some stories do not need telling.

President Karzai is an incredibly kind and decent man. I had the pleasure of meeting him, and he genuinely cares for his people. But I think he had too much of a tendency to want to rule by listening to all voices at all times.

[Barack Obama] is sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but they have also realized that we are not going to win that war through guns and tanks. We have to engage the neighbors, and it is good that there is a non-military strategy in addition to a military strategy. It is, at least, encouraging. Whether it will work or not, the jury is still put.