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 tha...
She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.
She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps...
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.
Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
No one has to know. No one would. It would be her secret, one she would share with the mountains only. The question is whether it is a secret she can live with, and Parwana thinks she knows the answer...
Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this wo...
Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this wo...
Mariam longed to place a ruler on a page and draw important-looking lines
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
Laila remembered how Mammy had dropped to the ground, how she’d screamed, torn at her hair. But Laila couldn’t even manage that. She could hardly move. She could hardly move a muscle.She sat on the ch...
Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she had married a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn't understand. She didn't understand that if she looked into a mirror, she would find the one unfa...
Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive, Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not.
It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.
In the parlance of economics, Julien has said to Pari that if she cut off the supply of attention, perhaps the demands for it would cease as well.
In his rearview mirror, I saw something flash in his eyes. You want to know? he sneered. Let me imagine, Agha sahib. You probably lived in a big two- or three-story house with a nice backyard that you...
In a British accent, he tells me his name is Dr.Nawaz, and suddenly I want to be away from this man, because I don't think I can bear what he has come to tell me. He says the boy had cut himself deepl...
If I’ve learned anything in Kabul, it is that human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.
I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig your...