Dr. Bashiri, if I ever want to put a curse in someone, I say, 'May God give you a restaurant.

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.

The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder.

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.

I don't know what this feather means, the story of it, but I know it means he was thinking of me. For all these years. He remembered me.