My father and I did work for a while at the flea market and there really are rows of Afghans working there, some of whom I am related to.

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.

But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.