The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction.

There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir

No matter where we're born, which countries we're raised in, what cultures we come from, there are some universal experiences we all have as children. We all kind of start the same. We want the love of our parents, companionship, friends, we want to have fun, to play, and we're all hurt the first time we learn that the world is far from perfect place - it's the start of a series of epiphanies and realizations that is what growing up is all about.

If my book generates any sort of dialogue among Afghans, then I think it will have done a service to the community.

I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.

Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila.

A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.