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.

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

He is annoyed with their lack of interest, their blithe ignorance of the arbitrary genetic lottery that has granted them their privileged lives.

I guess some stories do not need telling.

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.