There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

For you, a thousand times over

I came to the US as an immigrant and I recall vividly those first few years in California, the brief time we spent on welfare, and the difficult task of assimilating into a new culture.

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

Regret... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.

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.