Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.

But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

She would grab whatever she could -a look , a whisper , a moan - to salvage from perishing , to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires , and she couldn't , in the end , save it all .

The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.