I finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

some stories don't need telling

It's tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.

You’re not going to cry, are you? - I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years.

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

When I was in Afghanistan in 2007, I went from village to village where refugees had returned, and they were living out in the open under tents, sometimes completely exposed to the environment. And they were homeless, which meant they would lose children in the winter to the cold and in the summers in the extreme heat. It's extremely humiliating for them to be homeless, culturally it's very shameful.