Give sustenance, Allah. Give sustenance to me.

You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you.

Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.

People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don't they? Like a badge? I'm being genuine.

Sometimes, Soraya Sleeping next to me, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our love-making. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from Soraya and setting between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child.

I also felt The Kite Runner was a story that would lend itself well to a visual retelling in a graphic novel.

When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.