She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such...
She said there was comfort to be found in the permanence of mathematical truths, in the lack of arbitrariness and the absence of ambiguity. In knowing that the answers may be elusive, but they could b...
Regret... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.
People…shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair.
Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile. Never mi...
Một khi ta trở thành ai đó, con người cũ của ta cũng chết đi.
Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved b...
Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.
Make morning into a key and throw it into the well, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. Let the morning sun forget to rise in the east, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.
Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.
It's a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.
It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir, he said.
If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.
I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills.
I see you've confused what you're learning in school with actual education.
I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the...
I noticed Wahid's boys, all three thin with dirt-caked faces and short-cropped brown hair under their skull caps, stealing furative glances at my digital wristwatch....I unsnapped the wristwatch and g...
I do it for the girls.What girls?He smirked. They think it's sexy.It's not.No?I assure you.Not sexy?You look khila, like a half-wit.That hurts, he said.What girls anyway?You're jealous.I'm indifferent...
He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn't. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes.