There [in The Kite Runner] certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

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.

Give sustenance, Allah. Give sustenance to me.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing left. Nothing said.

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.

I'm gladly doing my own thing for the time being.