Background Image

...

He Said That If Culture Is A House, Then Language Was The Key To The Front Door; To All The Rooms Inside. Without It, He Said, You Ended Up Wayward, Without A Proper Home Or A Legitimate Identity.

-Khaled Hosseini

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

He Said That If

Khaled Hosseini

...

He Said That If Culture Is A House, Then Language Was The Key To The Front Door; To All The Rooms Inside. Without It, He Said, You Ended Up Wayward, Without A Proper Home Or A Legitimate Identity.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Khaled Hosseini

The Country [afghanistan] Faces Enormous Problems. There Is A Violent Insurgency Hampering The Rule Of Law And Developmental Efforts.

You Are Never Alone In Afghanistan. You Are Always In The Company Of Others, Usually Family. You Don't Understand Yourself Really As An Individual, You Understand Yourself As Part Of Something Bigger Than Yourself. Family Is So Central To Your Identity, To How You Make Sense Of Your World, It Is Very Dramatic, And Therefore An Amazing Source Of Storytelling, A Source Of Fiction For Me.

For Courage, There Must Be Something At Stake. I Come Here With Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

Nothing Good Came Free. Even Love. You Paid For All Things. And If You Were Poor, Suffering Was Your Currency.

Now, Especially In Public Places, You Always Have That Unease. When The Children Were Cast, If I Thought That They Might Be Victims Of Violence Because Of Participating In This Movie, We Would Have Chosen Children From Outside This Country.

My Books Are About Ordinary People, Like You, Me, People On The Street, People Who Really Have An Expectation Of Reasonable Happiness In Life, Want Their Life To Have A Sense Of Security And Predictability, Who Want To Belong To Something Bigger Than Them, Who Want Love And Affection In Their Life, Who Want A Good Future For The Children.

When I Go To Afghanistan, I Realize I've Been Spared, Due To A Random Genetic Lottery, By Being Born To People Who Had The Means To Get Out. Every Time I Go To Afghanistan I Am Haunted By That.

She Is Furious With Herself For Her Own Stupidity. Opening Herself Up Like This, Voluntarily, To A Lifetime Of Worry And Anguish. It Was Madness. Sheer Lunacy. A Spectacularly Foolish And Baseless Faith, Against Enormous Odds, That A World You Do Not Control Will Not Take From You The One Thing You Cannot Bear To Lose. Faith That The World Will Not Destroy You.

[barack Obama] Is Sending More Troops [to Afghanistan], But They Have Also Realized That We Are Not Going To Win That War Through Guns And Tanks. We Have To Engage The Neighbors, And It Is Good That There Is A Non-military Strategy In Addition To A Military Strategy. It Is, At Least, Encouraging. Whether It Will Work Or Not, The Jury Is Still Put.

There [in Afghanistan ] Is A Tremendous Need For Selter. So I Am Focusing Most Of The Efforts Of The Foundation To Building Shelters For Refugees In Northern Afghanistan And We Have Already Begun Doing So.

I Did See [in Afghanistan] Plenty That Reminded Me Of My Childhood. I Recognised My Old Neighbourhood, Saw My Old School, Streets Where I Had Played With My Brother And Cousins.

I Learned That The World Didn't See The Inside Of You, That It Didn't Care A Whit About The Hopes And Dreams, And Sorrows, That Lay Masked By Skin And Bone. It Was As Simple, As Absurd, And As Cruel As That.

It Was Only A Smile, Nothing More. It Didn't Make Everything All Right. It Didn't Make Anything All Right. Only A Smile. A Tiny Thing. A Leaf In The Woods, Shaking In The Wake Of A Startled Bird's Flight. But I'll Take It. With Open Arms. Because When Spring Comes, It Melts The Snow One Flake At A Time, And Maybe I Just Witnessed The First Flake Melting. - Amir

In 2004, I Took A One Year Sabbatical To Finish My Second Novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. At The End Of That Year, I Was Not Done With My Book, And Had To In Effect Resign From Work. I Did. I Never Went Back.

I Feel Like We [americans] Are A Unique Nation In This World, In That We Are Able To Implement Great Change In Our Society Over A Relatively Short Period Of Time. What Takes Centuries In Europe, We Accomplish In A Generation.

In Early 1999, I Was Watching Tv, When I Came Across A Story On Afghanistan. It Was A Story About The Taliban And The Restrictions They Were Imposing On The Afghan People, Most Notably Women. At Some Point In The Story, There Was A Casual Reference To Them Having Banned The Game Of Kite Fighting. This Detail Struck A Personal Chord With Me, As I Had Grown Up In Kabul Flying Kite With My Friends.

You Have Extreme Poverty And High Crime And You Have To Admit That The Governance Of The Kabul Regime Has Been Poor And Has Been Losing Its Popular Legitimacy. You Have A Corrupt Police Force, Not To Mention Homelessness, Joblessness. The Problems Are Huge.

There Is A God, There Always Has Been. I See Him Here, In The Eyes Of The People In This [hospital] Corridor Of Desperation. This Is The Real House Of God, This Is Where Those Who Have Lost God Will Find Him... There Is A God, There Has To Be, And Now I Will Pray, I Will Pray That He Will Forgive That I Have Neglected Him All Of These Years, Forgive That I Have Betrayed, Lied, And Sinned With Impunity Only To Turn To Him Now In My Hour Of Need. I Pray That He Is As Merciful, Benevolent, And Gracious As His Book Says He Is.

The Story Of What Has Happened To Women In Afghanistan, However, Is A Very Important One, And Fertile Ground For Fiction.

All Stories I Write Are Compulsive. Anything I’ve Ever Written Was Because I Don’t Have A Choice. I Write Stories Because I Can’t Wait To Tell It, I Can’t Wait To See How It Ends.

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

Perhaps This Is Just Punishment For Those Who Have Been Heartless, To Understand Only When Nothing Can Be Undone.

If You Were The Poor, Suffering Was Your Currency.

There Is An Energy, A Romance In Writing The First Novel That Can Never Be Duplicated Again. I Was Entirely Absorbed In That World As I Wrote The Book [the Kite Runner] And To See The Final Page Of That Manuscript Whir Out Of The Printer Was A Very Special Feeling Indeed.

Afghan Women, As A Group, I Think Their Suffering Has Been Equaled By Very Few Other Groups In Recent World History.

If Thou Art Indeed My Father, Then Hast Thou Stained Thy Sword In The Life-blood Of Thy Son. And Thous Didst It Of Thine Obstinacy. For I Sought To Turn Thee Unto Love, And I Implored Of Thee Thy Name, For I Thought To Behold In Thee The Tokens Recounted Of My Mother. But I Appealed Unto Thy Heart In Vain, And Now Is The Time Gone For Meeting.

I Returned To Kabul After A 27-year Absence. I Came Away With Some Optimism But Not As Much As I Had Hoped For. The Two Major Issues In Afghanistan Are A Lack Of Security Outside Kabul (particularly In The South And East) And The Powerful Warlords Ruling Over The Provinces With Little Or No Allegiance To The Central Government. The Other Rapidly Rising Concern Is The Narcotic Trade Which, If Not Dealt With, May Turn Afghanistan Into Another Bolivia Or Colombia.

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.

The Novel [the Kite Runner] Came About As An Expansion Of That Original, Unpublished Short Story.

A Boy Who Won't Stand Up For Himself Becomes A Man Who Can't Stand Up To Anything.

When I Was In Afghanistan In 2007, I Went From Village To Village Where Refugees Had Returned, And They Were Living Out In The Open Under Tents, Sometimes Completely Exposed To The Environment. And They Were Homeless, Which Meant They Would Lose Children In The Winter To The Cold And In The Summers In The Extreme Heat. It's Extremely Humiliating For Them To Be Homeless, Culturally It's Very Shameful.

The Film [kite Runner] Was Not As Big A Hit In The United States As It Was Worldwide, I Think It May Have Been Swallowed Up By All The Other Movies It Had To Go Up Against.

There [in The Kite Runner] Certainly Are, As Is Always The Case With Fiction, Autobiographical Elements Woven Through The Narrative.

I Have Lived A Long Time, And One Thing I Have Come To See Is That One Is Well Served By A Degree Of Both Humility And Charity When Judging The Inner Workings Of Another Person's Heart

Literary Fiction Is Kept Alive By Women. Women Read More Fiction, Period.

I Also Felt The Kite Runner Was A Story That Would Lend Itself Well To A Visual Retelling In A Graphic Novel.

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.

By Then The Kite Runner Had Become Quite Successful And I Found Myself In A Position That I Had Always Dreamed Of My Whole Life, Which Was To Write For A Living.

Even After The Kite Runner Was Published I Continued To Practice For Another Eighteen Months. But I Had Always Had A Love Of Writing And A Compulsion To Do It.

In March Of 2001, I Revisited The Short Story, And Found That Thought It Did Not Work Well As A Short Story, It Might Work Much Better As A Longer One. The Novel [the Kite Runner] Came About As An Expansion Of That Original, Unpublished Short Story.

I Suspect The Truth Is That We Are Waiting, All Of Us, Against Insurmountable Odds, For Something Extraordinary To Happen To Us.

It Is A Heartbreaking Sound, Amir Jan, The Wailing Of A Mother. I Pray To Allah You Never Hear It.

It Turned Out That, Like Satan, Cancer Had Many Names.

I'm Sorry," Laila Says, Marveling At How Every Afghan Story Is Marked By Death And Loss And Unimaginable Grief. And Yet, She Sees, People Find A Way To Survive, To Go On.

Her Beauty Was The Talk Of The Valley.it Skipped Two Generations Of Women In Our Family, But It Sure Didn't Bypass You, Laila.

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

Boys, Laila Came To See, Treated Friendship The Way They Treated The Sun: Its Existence Undisputed; Its Radiance Best Enjoyed, Not Beheld Directly.

Probably The Single Most Commen Response I Get From My Readesr, Be It Through E-mails Or Letters, Is That They Did Not Know Much, Or At Times, They're Quite Frank, They Didn't Care Much About Afghanistan. But They Pay Attention More After Reading These Novels, And At Times It Has Triggered This Humaitarian Spirt: Some Have Donated Money Or At Time Times, People Have Joined Humatiarian Organizations That Work In Afghanistan.

Every Woman Needed A Husband, Even If He Did Silence The Song In Her.

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

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 Changed The Subject." "from What?" "the Empty-headed Girls Who Think You're Sexy." "you Know." "know What?" "that I Only Have Eyes For You." Laila Swooned Inside. She Tried To Read His Face But Was Met By A Look That Was Indecipherable: The Cheerful, Cretinous Grin At Odds With The Narrow, Half Desperate Look In His Eyes. A Clever Look, Calculated To Fall Precisely At The Midpoint Between Mockery And Sincerity

On A High Mountain I Stood, And Cried The Name Of Ali, Lion Of God.o Ali, Lion Of God, King Of Men, Bring Joy To Our Sorrowful Hearts.

For You, A Thousand Times Over

How Many More People Right Now Feel Connected To Mumbai Because Of Slumdog Millionaire, Or Suddenly Are Interested In The Plight Of Orphans On Mumbai After Seeing That Film? The Same Thing With The Kite Runner And A Thousand Splendid Suns.

All My Life, She Gave To Me A Shovel And Said, Fill These Holes Inside Of Me, Pari.

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.

But Then It Passed, As All Things Do.

I Have This Almost Pathological Fear Of Boring The Reader.

The Desert Weed Lives On, But The Flower Of Spring Blooms And Wilts.

I Wished I Could Be Alone In My Room, With My Books, Away From These People.

I Foresaw My Life Unfolding As An Interminable Stretch Of Nothingness And So I Spent My Years On Tinos Floundering, Feeling Like A Stand-in For Myself, A Proxy, As Though My Real Self Resided Elsewhere, Waiting To Unite Someday With This Dimmer, More Hollow Self. I Felt Marooned. An Exile In My Own Home

It's Hard When You Make A Film From A Book That So Many People Love, Because There's No Way To Get The Entire Story Into A Two-hour Movie. But I Was Pleased With The Reaction [for Kite Runner].

I'm A Pretty Uncomplicated Person. I Live A Very Simple Life With My Family And I Enjoy Very Ordinary Things.

Perspective [is] A Luxury When Your Head [is] Constantly Buzzing With A Swarm Of Demons.

A Sudden Happiness Catches Me Unawares. I Feel It Trickling Into Me, And My Eyes Go Liquid With Gratitude And Hope.

I Thought About You All The Time. I Used To Pray That You’d Live To Be A Hundred Years Old. I Didn’t Know. I Didn’t Know That You Were Ashamed Of Me.

We [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] Support And Fund Projects That Bring Jobs, Healthcare, And Education To Women And Children. In Addition, We Award Scholarships To Women Pursuing Higher Education In Afghanistan.

I Ran. A Grown Man Running With A Swarm Of Screaming Children. But I Didn't Care. I Ran With The Wind Blowing In My Face, And A Smile As Wide As The Valley Of Panjsher On My Lip. I Ran

At Least, It Is Encouraging To Me That President [barack] Obama Has Put Afghanistan Front And Center In This Broader So-called War On Terror, And That He Is Taking A Different Approach To Afghanistan.

Reading Is An Active, Imaginative Act; It Takes Work.

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 By An Aggrieved Woman Somewhere In The World. That All The Sighs Drifted Up The Sky, Gathered Into Clouds, Then Broke Into Tiny Pieces That Fell Silently On The People Below. As A Reminder Of How People Like Us Suffer, She'd Said. How Quietly We Endure All That Falls Upon Us.

I'm Gladly Doing My Own Thing For The Time Being.

The Chinese Say It's Better To Be Deprived Of Food For Three Days Than Tea For One.

Nothing Wrong With Cowardice As Long As It Comes With Prudence. But When A Coward Stops Remembering Who He Is... God Help Him.

I Remember Reading 'the Grapes Of Wrath' In High School In 1983. My Family Had Immigrated To The U.s. Three Years Before, And I Had Spent The Better Part Of The First Two Years Learning English. John Steinbeck's Book Was The First Book I Read In English Where I Had An 'aha!' Moment, Namely In The Famed Turtle Chapter.

Afghanistan Is A Rural Nation, Where 85 Percent Of People Live In The Countryside. And Out There It's Very, Very Conservative, Very Tribal - Almost Medieval.

But Time, It Is Like Charm. You Never Have As Much As You Think.

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.

Blood Is A Powerful Thing

He Knew I'd Seen Everything In That Alley, That I'd Stood There And Done Nothing. He Knew That I'd Betrayed Him And Yet He Was Rescuing Me Once Again, Maybe For The Last Time.

My Father And I Did Work For A While At The Flea Market And There Really Are Rows Of Afghans Working There, Some Of Whom I Am Related To.

There Was Brotherhood Between People Who Had Fed From The Same Breast, A Kinship That Even Time Could Not Break. - Amir

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.

Like A Compass Needle That Points North, A Man's Accusing Finger Always Finds A Woman. Always.

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

There Was So Much Goodness In My Life. So Much Happiness. I Wondered Whether I Deserved Any Of It.

You Have These Crops Of Poppies That Supply Something Like 90% Of The Heroin Sold In Europe And Actually Represents More Than Half Of The Afghanistan's Gdp.

You're Gutless. It's How You Were Made. And That's Not Such A Bad Thing Because Your Saving Grace Is That You've Never Lied To Yourself About It. Not About That. Nothing Wrong With Cowardice As Long As It Comes With Prudence. But When A Coward Stops Remembering Who He Is... God Help Him.

As Far As I Know, He Never Asked Where She Had Been Or Why She Had Left And She Never Told. I Guess Some Stories Do Not Need Telling.

The [george W.] Bush Administration Tripled Its Aid Package To Afghanistan. [hamid] Karzai Finally (and Courageously) Announced That Warlords Will Be Forbidden From Holding Office In The Future Government. And Finally, Nato Agreed To Expand The Peacekeeping Forces To Troubled Areas Outside Of Kabul.

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

I Have Very Fond Memories Of My Childhood In Afghanistan, Largely Because My Memories, Unlike Those Of The Current Generation Of Afghans, Are Untainted By The Spectre Of War, Landmines, And Famine.

I Opened My Mouth, Almost Said Something. Almost. The Rest Of My Life Might Have Turned Out Differently If I Had. But I Didn’t.

I Have Been A Fan Of Comic Books Since Childhood.

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.

I Wondered If That Was How Forgiveness Budded; Not With The Fanfare Of Epiphany, But With Pain Gathering Its Things, Packing Up, And Slipping Away Unannounced In The Middle Of The Night.

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.

I Think That To Fully Appreciate Baseball, It Helps To Have Been Born In The U.s.

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.

She Held Her Breath, And In Her Head, Counted Seconds. She Pretended That For Each Second She Didn’t Breathe, God Would Grant Her Another Day

I Believe Fabio Celoni's Work Vividly Brings To Life Not Only The Mountains, The Bazaars, The City Of Kabul And Its Kite-dotted Skies, But Also The Many Struggles, Conflicts, And Emotional Highs And Lows Of Amir's Journey [from The The Kite Runner].

Yes, Hope Is A Strange Thing. Peace At Last. But At What Price?

Soon, He Would Become An Adult. And When He Did, There Would Be Not Going Back Because Adulthood Was Akin To What His Father Had Once Said About Being A War Hero: One You Became One, You Died One.

I Will Say That There Is An Inordinate Amount Of Medicine In My Novels, Especially The First One. There Are A Lot Of Medical Things That Happen. A Hip Fracture, Three Different Kinds Of Lung Cancer, Pneumonia, Blood Poisoning, And So On.

The Taliban's Acts Of Cultural Vandalism - The Most Infamous Being The Destruction Of The Giant Bamiyan Buddhas - Had A Devastating Effect On Afghan Culture And The Artistic Scene. The Taliban Burned Countless Films, Vcrs, Music Tapes, Books, And Paintings. They Jailed Filmmakers, Musicians, Painters, And Sculptors.

Sometimes, Soraya Sleeping Next To Me, I Lay In Bed And Listened To The Screen Door Swinging Open And Shut With The Breeze, To The Crickets Chirping In The Yard. And I Could Almost Feel The Emptiness In Soraya's Womb, Like It Was A Living, Breathing Thing. It Had Seeped Into Our Marriage, That Emptiness, Into Our Laughs, And Our Love-making. And Late At Night, In The Darkness Of Our Room, I'd Feel It Rising From Soraya And Setting Between Us. Sleeping Between Us. Like A Newborn Child.

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.

I Experienced Kabul With My Brother The Way Amir And Hassan Do: Long School Days In The Summer, Kite Fighting In The Winter Time, Westerns With John Wayne At Cinema Park, Big Parties At Our House In Wazir Akbar Khan, Picnics In Paghman.

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.

You Say You Felt A Presence, But I Only Sensed An Absence. A Vague Pain Without A Source. I Was Like A Patient Who Cannot Tell The Doctor Where It Hurts, Only That It Does.

You Don't Have To Donate Money, It Can Be Clothes, Or Books, Or Mediavl Supplies. So There's So Much That Can Be Done [for Refugees], The Most Difficult Thing Is That First Step That Decision To Do Something.

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.

Then I Think Of All The Tricks, All The Minutes All The Hours And Days And Weeks And Months And Years Waiting For Me. All Of It Without Them. And I Can't Breathe Then, Like Someone's Stepping On My Heart, Laila. So Weak I Just Want To Collapse Somewhere.

Men Are Easy,' He Said, Fingers Tapping On His Mahogany Desk. 'a Man's Plumbing Is Like His Mind: Simple, Very Few Surprises. You Ladies, On The Other Hand...well, God Put A Lot Of Thought Into Making You.

The Experience Of Writing 'the Kite Runner' Is One I Will Always Think Back On With Fondness. There Is An Energy, A Romance In Writing The First Novel That Can Never Be Duplicated Again.

I Entered The Literary World, Really, From Outside. My Entire Background Has Been In Sciences; I Was A Biology Major In College, Then Went To Medical School. I've Never Had Any Formal Training In Writing. So What I Know About Writing, I Know From My Own Instincts, And Whatever The Narrative Voice Is In My Own Head.

My Wife Is My In-home Editor And Reads Everything I Write.

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.

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 Yourself To Your Own Demise.

The Images [of The Kite Runner Grafic] Were Created In Fabio Celoni's Mind. I Chose To Let Him Take The Lead. Fabio And I Did Exchange An E-mail Or Two, But It Was My Intention To Step Out Of The Way And Let His Artistic Instincts Take Over.

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.

It's Tremendous What Can Happen When Suddenly You Make An Emotional Connection.

Emotional Connection

I Found A Sad Little Fairy Beneath The Shade Of A Paper Tree. I Know A Sad Little Fairy Who Was Blown Away By The Wind One Night.

I Have A Theory About Marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And It’s That Nearly Always You Will Know Within Two Weeks If It’s Going To Work. It’s Astonishing How Many People Remain Shackled For Years, Decades Even, In A Protracted And Mutual State Of Self-delusion And False Hope When In Fact They Had Their Answer In Those First Two Weeks.

Life Just Doesn't Care About Our Aspirations, Or Sadness. It's Often Random, And It's Often Stupid And It's Often Completely Unexpected, And The Closures And The Epiphanies And Revelations We End Up Receiving From Life, Begrudgingly, Rarely Turn Out To Be The Ones We Thought.

I Give Novels As Gifts, And There Is Nothing I Like To Receive More As A Gift.

If You Connect Emotionally With The Plight Of Those Characters, Ou Feel What They Feel And You Walk Away With A Sense Of Understanding And Empathy, And Hopefully, Something Has Been Illuminated For You. And I Tink That's What Happendd For A Lot Of Readers With My Novels.

I Think Novelists, When They Write Their Books, End Up Having Occasionally Serving A Purpose And Playing Roles That They Never Really Fully Either Intended Or Even Understood.

The Impact Had Cut Your Upper Lip In Two, He Had Said, Clean Down The Middle. Clean Down The Middle. Like A Harelip.

Kabul Is... A Thousand Tragedies Per Square Mile.

And One More Thing...you Will Never Again Refer To Him As 'hazara Boy' In My Presence. He Has A Name And It's Sohrab.

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.

What Was I Supposed To Be, Growing In Your Womb -- Assuming It Was Even In Our Womb That I Was Conceived? A Seed Of Hope? A Ticket Purchased To Ferry You From The Dark? A Patch For That Hole You Carried In Your Heart? If So, Then I Wasn't Enough. I Wasn't Nearly Enough. I Was No Balm To Your Pain, Only Another Dead End, Another Burden, And You Must Have Seen That Early On. You Must Have Realized It. But What Could You Do? You Couldn't Go Down To The Pawnshop And Sell Me.

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

Quiet Is Turning Down The Volume Knob On Life.

The Cities, The Roads, The Countryside, The People I Meet - They All Begin To Blur. I Tell Myself I Am Searching For Something. But More And More, It Feels Like I Am Wandering, Waiting For Something To Happen To Me, Something That Will Change Everything, Something That My Whole Life Has Been Leading Up To.

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.

And That's The Thing About People Who Mean Everything They Say. They Think Everyone Else Does Too.

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

Lost Everything

Your Job Today Is To Pass Gas. You Do That And We Can Start Feeding You Liquids. No Fart, No Food.

What Good Is Regret? It Brings Back Nothing. What We Have Lost Is Irretrievable.

Don't Be Afraid To Tell The Truth. It's Better To Hurt Someone By Truth Than To Make Them Happy By Lies.

Telling The Truth

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 Have A Particular Disdain For Islamic Extremism, And Of Course, In Both 'the Kite Runner' And 'a Thousand Splendid Suns' That's Obvious.

But The Game Involves Only Male Names. Because, If It's A Girl, Laila Has Already Named Her

Was There Happiness At The End [of The Movie], They Wanted To Know. If Someone Were To Ask Me Today Whether The Story Of Hassan, Sohrab, And Me Ends With Happiness, I Wouldn't Know What To Say. Does Anybody's? After All, Life Is Not A Hindi Movie. Zendagi Migzara, Afghans Like To Say: Life Goes On, Undmindful Of Beginning, En, Kamyab, Nah-kam, Crisis Or Catharsis, Moving Forward Like A Slow, Dusty Caravan Of Kochis.

There Is A Way To Be Good Again.

Writing Fiction Is The Act Of Weaving A Series Of Lies To Arrive At A Greater Truth.

So, Then. You Want A Story And I Will Tell You One.

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

It Was The Kind Of Love That, Sooner Or Later, Cornered You Into A Choice: Either You Tore Free Or You Stayed And Withstood Its Rigor Even As It Squeezed You Into Something Smaller Than Yourself.

In Many Parts Of The World, A Man's Accusing Finger Always Finds A Woman. But I Think We Need Women To Solve The Problems That Men Create.

A Man Who Has No Conscience, No Goodness, Does Not Suffer.

Throughout The Last Century There Were Multiple Attempts At Giving Afghan Women More Autonomy, To Change Marriage Laws, To Abolish The Practice Of Bride Price And Child Marriage, And To Enforce Women To Be Involved In School. Every Time, The Reaction From The Traditionalists Was One Of Contempt And Scorn And At Times Outright Rebellion. I Think The Emancipation Of Women In Afghanistan Has To Come From Inside, Through Afghans Themselves, Gradually, Over Time.

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. But I Am Here, My Legs Blocks Of Concrete, My Lungs Empty Of Air, My Throat Burning. There Will Be No Floating Away.

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.

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 Will Follow You To The Ends Of The World.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now This Lou Gehrig Fellow Of Mine. How Did Men Come To Monopolize Disease Names Too?

Laila Has Moved On. Because In The End She Knows That’s All She Can Do. That And Hope.

You've Always Been A Tourist Here. You Just Didn't Know It.

I Brought Hassan’s Son From Afghanistan To America, Lifting Him From The Certainty Of Turmoil And Dropping Him In A Turmoil Of Uncertainty

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.

Though There Had Been Moments Of Beauty In It, Mariam Knew That Life For Most Part Has Been Unkind To Her. But As She Walked The Final Twenty Paces, She Could Not Help But Wish For More Of It.

I Didn't Remember What Month That Was, Or What Year Even. I Only Knew The Memory Lived In Me, A Perfectly Encapsulated Morsel Of A Good Past, A Brushstroke Of Color On The Gray, Barren Canvas That Our Lives Had Become.

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.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing Left. Nothing Said.

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.

My Memories Of Kabul Are Vastly Different Than The Way It Is When I Go There Now. My Memories Are Of The Final Years Before Everything Changed. When I Grew Up In Kabul, It Couldn't Be Mistaken For Beirut Or Tehran, As It Was Still In A Country That's Essentially Religious And Conservative, But It Was Suprisingly Progressive And Liberal.

Hassan And I Looked At Each Other. Cracked Up. The Hindi Kid Would Soon Learn What The British Learned Earlier In The Century, And What The Russians Would Eventually Learn By The Late 1980's: That Afghans Are An Independent People. Afghans Cherish Customs But Abhor Rules. And So It Was With Kite Fighting. The Rules Were Simple: No Rules. Fly Your Kite. Cut The Opponents. Good Luck.

The Past Held Only This Wisdom: That Love Was A Damaging Mistake, And Its Accomplice, Hope, A Treacherous Illusion

People In The Countryside Carry A Sense Of Dignity. They Wear It, Don't They? Like A Badge? I'm Being Genuine.

There Is Only One Sin. And That Is Theft... When You Tell A Lie, You Steal Someones Right To The Truth.

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.

He Is Annoyed With Their Lack Of Interest, Their Blithe Ignorance Of The Arbitrary Genetic Lottery That Has Granted Them Their Privileged Lives.

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.

Her Impulse, Her Need, To Be The Corrector Of Injustices, Warden Of The Downtrodden Flock. And

‎i Know You're Still Young But I Want You To Understand And Learn This Now. Marriage Can Wait, Education Cannot. You're A Very Very Bright Girl. Truly You Are. You Can Be Anything You Want Laila. I Know This About You. And I Also Know That When This War Is Over Afghanistan Is Going To Need You As Much As Its Men Maybe Even More. Because A Society Has No Chance Of Success If Its Women Are Uneducated Laila. No Chance.

Hassan And I Fed From The Same Breasts. We Took Our First Steps On The Same Lawn In The Same Yard. And, Under The Same Roof, We Spoke Our First Words. Mine Was Baba. His Was Amir. My Name. Looking Back On It Now, I Think The Foundation For What Happened In The Winter Of 1975 —and All That Followed— Was Already Laid In Those First Words.

Time Can Be A Greedy Thing-sometimes It Steals The Details For Itself.

A Society Has No Chance Of Success If Its Women Are Uneducated.

I Think The Scale Of The Conflict [in Afghanistan] Has Dramatically Changed In 2003. You're Now Facing A Much More Motivated, Well-supported Enemy. I Don't See Any Quick End To This Thing.

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

And Yet She Was Leaving The World As A Woman Who Had Love And Been Loved Back. She Was Leaving It As A Friend, A Companion, A Guardian. A Mother. A Person Of Consequence At Last.

Hassan Couldn't Read A First-grade Textbook But He'd Read Me Plenty. That Was A Little Unsettling But Also Sort Of Comfortable To Have Someone Who Always Knew What You Needed.

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.

She Wished She Could Visit Mariam's Grave, To Sit With Her Awhile, Leave A Flower Or Two. But She Sees Now That It Doesn't Matter. Mariam Is Never Very Far.... Mariam Is In Her Own Heart, Where She Shines With The Bursting Radiance Of A Thousand Suns.

That's How Children Deal With Terror, They Fall Asleep.

All My Life, I'd Been Around Men. That Night, I Discovered The Tenderness Of A Woman.

People Learned To Live With The Most Unimaginable Things.

But If You Have A Book That Needs Urgent Reading,' She Said, 'then Hakim Is Your Man.

Writing For Me Is Largely About Rewriting.

People Find Meaning And Redemption In The Most Unusual Human Connections.

Human Connection

At The Time We Are Focusing Our Efforts Primarily On Building Shelters For Refugees. Homelessness In Afghanistan Is A Huge Problem.

I Think He Loved Us Equally, But Differently.

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.

Zindagi Migzara (life Goes On)

The Bulk Of Our Efforts [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] Has Focused On Helping Build Permanent Shelters For Returning Refugees Who Are Homeless, Living Out In The Open Or In Makeshift Homes. This Is An Area Of Urgent Need As Afghanistan's Natural Elements Are Quite Harsh, With Very Hot Summers, And Freezing Winters.

Trending Author

Robert Anderson

Peter Kropotkin

James Callaghan

Category