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But Laila Has Decided That She Will Not Be Crippled By Resentment. Mariam Wouldn’t Want It That Way. ‘what’s The Sense?’ She Would Say With A Smile Both Innocent And Wise. ‘what Good Is It, Laila Jo?’ And So Laila Has Resigned Herself To Moving On. For Her Own Sake, For Tariq’s, For Her Children’s. And For Mariam, Who Still Visits Laila In Her Dreams, Who Is Never More Than A Breath Or Two Below Her Consciousness. Laila Has Moved On. Because In The End She Knows That’s All She Can Do. That And Hope.

-Khaled Hosseini

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But Laila Has Decided

Khaled Hosseini

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But Laila Has Decided That She Will Not Be Crippled By Resentment. Mariam Wouldn’t Want It That Way. ‘what’s The Sense?’ She Would Say With A Smile Both Innocent And Wise. ‘what Good Is It, Laila Jo?’ And So Laila Has Resigned Herself To Moving On. For Her Own Sake, For Tariq’s, For Her Children’s. And For Mariam, Who Still Visits Laila In Her Dreams, Who Is Never More Than A Breath Or Two Below Her Consciousness. Laila Has Moved On. Because In The End She Knows That’s All She Can Do. That And Hope.

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If My Book Generates Any Sort Of Dialogue Among Afghans, Then I Think It Will Have Done A Service To The Community.

My Family Left Afghanistan In 1976, Well Before The Communist Coup And The Soviet Invasion. We Certainly Thought We Would Be Going Back. But When We Saw Those Soviet Tanks Rolling Into Afghanistan, The Prospect For Return Looked Very Dim. Few Of Us, I Have To Say, Envisioned That Nearly A Quarter Century Of Bloodletting Would Follow.

At Last, She Makes Her Choice. She Turns Around, Drops Her Head, And Walks Toward A Horizon She Cannot See. After That, She Does Not Look Back Anymore. She Knows That If She Does, She Will Weaken.

They Say, Find A Purpose In Your Life And Live It. But, Sometimes, It Is Only After You Have Lived That You Recognize Your Life Had A Purpose, And Likely One You Never Had In Mind.

I Would Give Them (aspiring Writers) The Oldest Advice In The Craft: Read And Write. Read A Lot. Read New Authors And Established Ones, Read People Whose Work Is In The Same Vein As Yours And Those Whose Genre Is Totally Different. You've Heard Of Chain-smokers. Writers, Especially Beginners, Need To Be Chain-readers. And Lastly, Write Every Day. Write About Things That Get Under Your Skin And Keep You Up At Night.

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In Afghan Society, Parents Play A Central Role In The Lives Of Their Children; The Parent-child Relationship Is Fundamental To Who You Are And What You Become And How You Perceive Yourself, And It Is Laden With Contradictions, With Tension, With Anger, With Love, With Loathing, With Angst.

I Think The Changes That Have Happened, There Have Been Come Positive, But By And Large, You Have To Say The Changes Have Been Negative. The Situation Has Reached A Fairly Critical Stage In Afghanistan.

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And That, ...is The Story Of Our Country, One Invasion After Another...macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now The Soviets. But We're Like Those Walls Up There. Battered, And Nothing Pretty To Look At, But Still Standing.

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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.

I Shook My Head No. For Minutes, Neither Of Us Spoke A Word. It Breathed Between Us, What He Had Said, The Pain Of A Life Suppressed, Of Happiness Never To Be.

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.

She Passed These Years In A Distant Corner Of Her Mind. A Dry, Barren Field, Out Beyond Wish And Lament, Beyond Dream And Disillusionment. There, The Future Did Not Matter. And The Past Held Only This Wisdom: That Love Was A Damaging Mistake, And It Accomplice, Hope, A Treacherous Illusion.

Life Goes On, Unmindful Of Beginning, End…crisis Or Catharsis, Moving Forward Like A Slow, Dusty Caravan Of Kochis (nomads).

We Will Also Be Funding Projects That Empower Women And Children In Afghanistan And Now And Then Give Scholarships To Afghan Students Here In The Bay Area.

If There's A God Out There, Then I Would Hope He Has More Important Things To Attend To Than My Drinking Scotch Or Eating Pork.

But Better To Get Hurt By The Truth Than Comforted With A Lie.

Kabul Was Very Popular With The Hippies In The Sixties And Seventies. It Was Very Quiet And Peaceful.

No Matter Where We're Born, Which Countries We're Raised In, What Cultures We Come From, There Are Some Universal Experiences We All Have As Children. We All Kind Of Start The Same. We Want The Love Of Our Parents, Companionship, Friends, We Want To Have Fun, To Play, And We're All Hurt The First Time We Learn That The World Is Far From Perfect Place - It's The Start Of A Series Of Epiphanies And Realizations That Is What Growing Up Is All About.

You Can Not Stop You From Being Who You Are.

Though The Kite Runner Was My First Completed Novel, I Had Been Writing On And Off For Most Of My Life, Primarily Short Stories, And Primarily For Myself.

People Talk About Apathy, Especially In Developed Countries. We're Kind Of Lulled Into These Tranquil Lives, And We Are Pursuing Our Own Thing And There Is So Much Suffering On A Mass Scale Around The World That You Kind Of Become Fatalistic. You Might Think Suffering Is Inevitable, You Kind Of Lose Your Sense Of Moral Urgency. But There Is Always Something You Can Do For Someone In The World.

I Found Myself Sitting At The Computer, And I Thought I Was Going To Write A Kind Of Simple Nostalgic Story About Two Boys And Their Love Of Kite Fighting. But Stories Have A Will Of Their Own, And This One Turned Out To Be This Dark Tale About Betrayal, Loss, Regret. The Short Story Which Was About 25 Pages Long Sat Around For A Couple Of Years.

There Isn't, Even Now, A Great Tradition Of Novel-writing In Afghanistan. Most Of The Literature Is In The Form Of Poetry.

It's Wrong To Hurt Even Bad People. Because They Don't Know Any Better, And Because Bad People Sometimes Become Good.

I Want To Give Up My Bearings, Slip Out Of Who I Am, Shed Everything, The Way A Snake Discards Old Skin.

But Then It Passed, As All Things Do.

But Laila Has Decided That She Will Not Be Crippled By Resentment. Mariam Wouldn’t Want It That Way. ‘what’s The Sense?’ She Would Say With A Smile Both Innocent And Wise. ‘what Good Is It, Laila Jo?’ And So Laila Has Resigned Herself To Moving On. For Her Own Sake, For Tariq’s, For Her Children’s. And For Mariam, Who Still Visits Laila In Her Dreams, Who Is Never More Than A Breath Or Two Below Her Consciousness. Laila Has Moved On. Because In The End She Knows That’s All She Can Do. That And Hope.

A Great Deal Remains To Be Done In Afghanistan And The Jury Is Out As To Whether The International Community Has The Commitment And The Patience To See The Rebuilding Process Through.

I Wanted To Tell Them That, In Kabul, We Snapped A Tree Branch And Used It As A Credit Card. Hassan And I Would Take The Wooden Stick To The Bread Maker. He'd Carve Notches On Our Stick With His Knife, One Notch For Each Loaf Of Naan He'd Pull For Us From The Tandoor's Roaring Flames. At The End Of The Month, My Father Paid Him For The Number Of Notches On The Stick. That Was It. No Questions. No Id.

I Loved Him In That Moment, Loved Him More Than I'd Ever Loved Anyone, And I Wanted To To Tell Them All That I Was The Snake In The Grass, The Monster In The Lake. I Wasn't Worthy Of This Sacrifice; I Was A Liar, A Cheat, A Thief. And I Would Have Told, Except That A Part Of Me Was Glad. Glad That This Would All Be Over With Soon. Baba Would Dismiss Them, There Would Be Some Pain, But Life Would Move On. I Wanted That, To Move On, To Forget, To Start With A Clean Slate. I Wanted To Be Able To Breathe Again.

I Think He Loved Us Equally, But Differently.

After Everything He'd Built, Planned, Fought For, Fretted Over, Dreamed Of, This Was The Summation Of His Life; One Disappointing Son And Two Suitcases.

Educate Yourself, Learn About What Refugees Face When They Don't Have Homes, After They Have Lost Everything.

Lost Everything

One Time, When I Was Very Little, I Climbed A Tree And Ate These Green, Sour Apples. My Stomach Swelled And Became Hard Like A Drum, It Hurt A Lot. Mother Said That If I'd Just Waited For The Apples To Ripen, I Wouldn't Have Become Sick. So Now, Whenever I Really Want Something, I Try To Remember What She Said About The Apples.

I Don't Know Whom Or What He Was Defying. [...] [m]aybe The God He Had Never Believed In.

I’m All You Have In This World Mariam, And When I’m Gone You’ll Have Nothing. You Are Nothing!

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 Coming Days And Weeks, Laila Would Scramble Frantically To Commit It All To Memory, What Happened Next. Like An Art Lover Running Out Of A Burning Museum, She Would Grab Whatever She Could--a Look, A Whisper, A Moan--to Salvage From Perishing To Preserve. But Time Is The Most Unforgiving Of Fires, And She Couldn't, In The End, Save It All.

I Don't Know The Nuts And Bolts Of Writing. I Studied Medicine. I Was A Pre-med Nerd. So Everything I Learned, I Know About Writing Is Very Instinctive.

Some Stories Don't Need Telling

It's Often A Matter Of Sitting In Front Of The Computer And Worrying. It's What Writing Comes Down To--worrying That Things Aren't Going To Work Out.

[kite Runner And A Thousand Splendid Suns] Is Not Just Unique To Books, But Films And Music.

Tariq Tucked The Gun Into The Waist Of His Denims. Then He Said A Thing Both Lovely And Terrible. "for You," He Said. "i'd Kill With It For You, Laila.

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.

I Was Good At Being A Doctor; My Patients Liked Me. At Times People Trust You With Things They Wouldn't Tell Their Spouses. It Was A Real Privilege.

He Had The Blue Kite In His Hands; That Was The First Thing I Saw. And I Can't Lie Now And Say My Eyes Didn't Scan It For Any Rips.

For You, A Thousand Times Over

I Think The Emancipation Of Women In Afghanistan Has To Come From Inside, Through Afghans Themselves, Gradually, Over Time.

The Problem, Of Course, Was That [he] Saw The World In Black And White. And He Got To Decide What Was Black And What Was White. You Can't Love A Person Who Lives That Way Without Fearing Him Too. Maybe Even Hating Him A Little.

Black And White

Not A Word Passes Between Us, Not Because We Have Nothing To Say, But Because We Don't Have To Say Anything

My Own Background Is Fairly Liberal And So This Notion Of 'protecting Women From Outside Intrusion' Is Not In My Nature, Nor In My Upbringing.

Of All The Hardships A Person Had To Face, None Was More Punishing Than The Simple Act Of Waiting.

I Was Overwhelmed With The Kindness Of People [in Afghanistan] And Found That They Had Managed To Retain Their Dignity, Their Pride, And Their Hospitality Under Unspeakably Bleak Conditions.

I Read Actual Physical Books And Have Thus Far Avoided The Electronic Lure.

The Things That Have Always Drawn Me To The Craft Of Writing Is Character, It's Story, It's Something That Becomes Like A Pebble In My Shoe, A Voice That I Just Can't Get Rid Of, And I've Got To See It Through.

I Have Been Involved With The Un Refugee Agency For A Few Years Now, And We Have Done Events To Speak About Refugees, Focusing More And More On The Situation With Afghan Refugees.

Those Who Saw Kite Runner Loved The Film, For The Most Part, People Seemed To Really Like The Film.

In Afghanistan, You Don't Understand Yourself Solely As An Individual. You Understand Yourself As A Son, A Brother, A Cousin To Somebody, An Uncle To Somebody. You Are Part Of Something Bigger Than Yourself.

People Say That Eyes Are Windows To The Soul.

Window To The Soul

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