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When I Went To Afghanistan In 2003, I Walked Into A War Zone. Entire Neighborhoods Had Been Demolished. There Were An Overwhelming Number Of Widows And Orphans And People Who Had Been Physically And Emotionally Damaged; Every 10-year-old Kid On The Street Knew How To Dismantle A Kalashnikov In Under A Minute. I Would Flip Through Math Textbooks Intended For Third Grade, Fourth Grade, And They Would Include Word Problems Such As, "if You Have 100 Grenades And 20 Mujahideen, How Many Grenades Per Mujahideen Do You Get?" War Has Infiltrated Every Facet Of Life.

-Khaled Hosseini

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When I Went To

Khaled Hosseini

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When I Went To Afghanistan In 2003, I Walked Into A War Zone. Entire Neighborhoods Had Been Demolished. There Were An Overwhelming Number Of Widows And Orphans And People Who Had Been Physically And Emotionally Damaged; Every 10-year-old Kid On The Street Knew How To Dismantle A Kalashnikov In Under A Minute. I Would Flip Through Math Textbooks Intended For Third Grade, Fourth Grade, And They Would Include Word Problems Such As, "if You Have 100 Grenades And 20 Mujahideen, How Many Grenades Per Mujahideen Do You Get?" War Has Infiltrated Every Facet Of Life.

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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.

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

The Story Line Of My Novel [the Kite Runner] Is Largely Fictional. The Characters Were Invented And The Plot Imagined.

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.

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.

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.

Must Have Been Quite The Culture Shock, Going There.” “yes It Was.” Idris Doesn’t Say That The Real Culture Shock Has Been In Coming Back.

America Was Different. America Was A River, Roarng Along, Unmindful Of The Past. I Could Wade Into This River, Let My Sins Drown To The Bottom, Let The Waters Carry Me Someplace Far. Someplace With No Ghosts, No Memories, And No Sins.

Mostly, Though, I Dream Of Good Things...i Dream That Flowers Will Bloom In The Streets..again And Music Will Play In The...houses And Kites Will Fly In The Skies.

It Always Hurts More To Have And Lose Than To Not Have In The First Place.

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.

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.

There Will Be No Floating Waway. There Will Be No Other Reality Tonight.

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.

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.

I Will Follow You To The Ends Of The World.

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.

Behind Every Trial And Sorrow That He Makes Us Shoulder, God Has A Reason.

If There Was A God, He'd Guide The Winds, Let Them Blow For Me So That, With A Tug Of My String, I'd Cut Loose My Pain, My Longing.

When I Went To Afghanistan In 2003, I Walked Into A War Zone. Entire Neighborhoods Had Been Demolished. There Were An Overwhelming Number Of Widows And Orphans And People Who Had Been Physically And Emotionally Damaged; Every 10-year-old Kid On The Street Knew How To Dismantle A Kalashnikov In Under A Minute. I Would Flip Through Math Textbooks Intended For Third Grade, Fourth Grade, And They Would Include Word Problems Such As, "if You Have 100 Grenades And 20 Mujahideen, How Many Grenades Per Mujahideen Do You Get?" War Has Infiltrated Every Facet Of Life.

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.

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

I Finally Had What I'd Wantes All Those Years. Except Now That I Had It, I Felt As Empty As This Unkempt Pool I Was Dangling My Legs Into.

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

Emotional Connection

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

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.

There Are A Lot Of Children In Afghanistan, But Little Childhood.

The Kite Runner Is A Story Of Two Boys And A Father, And The Strange Love Triangle That Binds Them.

And This Is What I Want You To Understand, That Good, Real Good, Was Born Out Of Your Father's Remorse. Sometimes, I Thing Everything He Did, Feeding The Poor On The Streets, Building The Orphanage, Giving Money To Friends In Need, It Was All His Way Of Redeeming Himself. And That, I Believe, Is What True Redemption Is, Amir Jan, When Guilt Leads To Good.

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

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.

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.

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.

Regret... When It Comes To You, I Have Oceans Of It.

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.

A Story Is Like A Moving Train: No Matter Where You Hop Onboard, You Are Bound To Reach Your Destination Sooner Or Later.

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.

That Same Night, I Wrote My First Short Story. It Took Me Thirty Minutes. It Was A Dark Little Tale About A Man Who Found A Magic Cup And Learned That If He Wept Into The Cup, His Tears Turned Into Pearls. But Even Though He Had Always Been Poor, He Was A Happy Man And Rarely Shed A Tear. So He Found Ways To Make Himself Sad So That His Tears Could Make Him Rich. As The Pearls Piled Up, So Did His Greed Grow. The Story Ended With The Man Sitting On A Mountain Of Pearls, Knife In Hand, Weeping Helplessly Into The Cup With His Beloved Wife's Slain Body In His Arms.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

People Learned To Live With The Most Unimaginable Things.

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

Years Later, I Learned An English Word For The Creature That Assef Was, A Word For Which A Good Farsi Equivalent Does Not Exist: Sociopath.

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

It's A Funny Thing... 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.

The Truth Is That No One Who Hasn't Actually Experienced The Senseless Chaos And Violence Of Combat Can Possibly Understand It, But Those Who Have And Who Try To Explain It To The Rest Of Us Are Offering Us A Precious Gift: A Part Of Their Soul That's Been Scorched In The Flames Of Hell. It's A Little Like Trying To Describe Music To The Deaf Or Color To The Blind ... To Make The Irrational Somewhat Sensible, Which Is Always Confusing And Frustrating, And Ultimately Futile.

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

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.

There Are, However, Those Who Have Called The Book [the Kite Runner] Divisive And Objected To Some Of The Issues Raised In The Book, Namely Racism, Discrimination, Ethnic Inequality Etc.

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.

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

Cruelty And Benevolence Are But Shades Of The Same Colour.

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 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.

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

Nothing To Lose

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

Children Aren't Coloring Books. You Don't Get To Fill Them With Your Favorite Colors.

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.

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.

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.

Equally Important Is The Lack Of Cultivable Land For Farmers, A Profound Problem When You Take Into Account That Afghanistan Has Always Largely Been An Agricultural Country, And That Even Before The Wars Destroyed Lands And Irrigation Canals, Only 5 Per Cent Of The Land Was Cultivable.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

All Good Things In Life Are Fragile And Easily Lost

Beauty Is An Enormous, Unmerited Gift Given Randomly, Stupidly.

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.

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

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

It May Be Unfair, But What Happens In A Few Days, Sometimes Even A Single Day, Can Change The Course Of A Whole Lifetime.

Afghanistan Has Always Been Sort Of A Fractured Nation, Very Tribal, Where The Countryside And The Distant Provinces Have Been Run By Custom, By Tribal Law And By Tribal Leaders Rather Than Edicts From The Central Government In Kabul.

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 Grew Up With Some Kind Of Storytelling Instinct, And When I Write, My Default Setting Is To Find A Story And Then To Tell It. It's The Only Way I Know How To Write.

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.

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.

In The End, The World Always Wins. That's Just The Way Of Things.

‎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.

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.

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

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

For Many People In The West, Afghanistan Is Synonymous With The Soviet War And The Taliban. I Wanted To Remind People That Afghans Had Managed To Live In Peaceful Anonymity For Decades, That The History Of The Afghans In The Twentieth Century Has Been Largely Pacific And Harmonious.

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.

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

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.

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

Lost Everything

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

Without Women Taking An Active Role In Afghan Society, Rebuilding Afghanistan Is Going To Be Very Difficult.

Writing For Me Is Largely About Rewriting.

I Don't Listen To Music When I Write - I Find It Distracting.

Listening To Music

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].

[flying Kite With My Friends] Is One Of The Seminal Memories Of Growing Up For Me.

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

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.

There Is A Way To Be Good Again.

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.

A Pathetic Shadow, Torn Between Her Envy And Thrill Of Being Seen With Masomma, Sharing In The Attention As A Weed Would, Lapping Up Water Meant For The Lily Upstream.

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.

When You Have Lived As Long As I Have, The Div Replied, You Find That Cruelty And Benevolence Are But Shades Of The Same Color.

You’re Not Going To Cry, Are You? - I Am Not Going To Cry! Not Over You. Not In A Thousand Years.

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

Everyone Is An Ocean Inside. Every Individual Walking The Street. Everyone Is A Universe Of Thoughts, And Insights, And Feelings. But Every Person Is Crippled In His Or Her Own Way By Our Inability To Truly Present Ourselves To The World.

Quiet Is Turning Down The Volume Knob On Life.

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

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

War Doesn't Negate Decency. It Demands It, Even More Than In Times Of Peace.

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

But It Is Important To Know This, To Know Your Roots. To Know Where You Started As A Person. If Not, Your Own Life Seems Unreal To You. Like A Puzzle. Vous Comprenez? Like You Have Missed The Beginning Of A Story And Now You Are In The Middle Of It, Trying To Understand.

Sad Stories Make Good Books

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You Say Their Stories, It Is Gift They Give You.

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.

People Say That Eyes Are Windows To The Soul.

Window To The Soul

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.

Michael Bealmear Is A Philanthropist, And He Has Become Interested In The Issue Of Refugees, And He Proposed That We Do An Event In His Community, Where We Could Dedicate An Entire Evening Focused On The Global Refugee Crisis, Focused Primarily On Afghanistan.

Human Behavior Is Messy And Unpredictable And Unconcerned With Convenient Symmetries.

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.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing Left. Nothing Said.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. She Has Lived With Secrets All Her Life.

Give Sustenance, Allah. Give Sustenance To Me.

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

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

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

And The Past Held Only This Wisdom: That Love Was A Damaging Mistake, And Its Accomplice, Hope, A Treacherous Illusion. And Whenever Those Twin Poisonous Flowers Began To Sprout In The Parched Land Of That Field, Mariam Uprooted Them. She Uprooted Them And Ditched Them Before They Took Hold.

Life Is A Train, Get On Board.

I Started A Foundation, Called The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. The Mission Has Been To Help The Most Vulnerable Groups In Afghanistan. So The Focus Has Been On Women, Children, And Homeless Refugees, Most Of Whom Are In Fact Women And Children.

If Culture Was A House, Then Language Was The Key To The Front Door, [and] To All Rooms Inside.

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.

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.

The Bewildering Success Of My Books Continues To Surprise Me.

If The Story Had Been About Anyone Else, It Would Been Dismissed As Laaf, That Afghan Tendency To Exaggerate ---sadly, Almost A National Affliction; If Someone Bragged That His Son Was A Doctor, Chances Were The Kid Had Once Passed A Biology Test In High School.

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

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

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.

A Part Of Me Was Hoping Someone Would Wake Up And Hear, So I Wouldn't Have To Live With This Lie Anymore. But No One Woke Up And In The Silence That Followed, I Understood The Nature Of My New Curse: I Was Going To Get Away With It.

When You Kill A Man, You Steal A Life. You Steal His Wife's Right To A Husband, Rob His Children Of A Father. When You Tell A Lie, You Steal Someone's Right To The Truth. When You Cheat, You Steal The Right To Fairness.

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.

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.

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 Don't Know What This Feather Means, The Story Of It, But I Know It Means He Was Thinking Of Me. For All These Years. He Remembered Me.

And Suddenly, Just Like That, Hope Became Knowledge. I Was Going To Win. It Was Just A Matter Of When.

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

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

J’aurais Dû être Plus Gentille—i Should Have Been More Kind. That Is Something A Person Will Never Regret. You Will Never Say To Yourself When You Are Old, Ah, I Wish I Was Not Good To That Person. You Will Never Think That.

After All, Life Is Not A Hindi Movie.

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.

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

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.

Quiet Is Peace. Tranquility. Quiet Is Turning Down The Volume Knob On Life. Silence Is Pushing The Off Button. Shutting It Down. All Of It.

I Returned To Afghanistan Because I Had A Deep Longing To See For Myself How People Lived, What They Thought Of Their Government, How Optimistic They Were About The Future Of Their Homeland.

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

It Was You Nabi. It Was Always You. Didn't You Know?

She Would Grab Whatever She Could -a Look , A Whisper , A Moan - To Salvage From Perishing , To Perserve. But Time Is Most Unforgivving Of Fires , And She Couldn't , In The End , Save It All .

A Man's Heart Is A Wretched, Wretched Thing. It Isn't Like A Mother's Womb. It Won't Bleed. It Won't Stretch To Make Room For You.

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.

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.

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.

She Was An Extraordinary Woman, And I Went To Bed That Night Feeling Like I Was Perhaps More Than Ordinary Myself. This Was The Effect She Had On Me.

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.

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 Guess Some Stories Do Not Need Telling.

I Laughed. Partly At The Joke, Partly At How Afghan Humor Never Changed. Wars Were Waged, The Internet Was Invented, And A Robot Had Rolled On The Surface Of Mars, And In Afghanistan We Were Still Telling Mullah Nasruddin Jokes.

For A Novelist, It’s Kind Of An Onerous Burden To Represent An Entire Culture. That Said, I’m In A Unique Position To Speak On Behalf Of Afghanistan On Certain Issues That I Feel Are Important, Particularly The Issue Of Afghan Refugees.

It So Happens That The Major Relationships In The Novel [the Kite Runner] Are Between Men, Dictated Not By Any Sort Of Prejudice Or Discomfort With Female Characters, But Rather By The Demands Of The Narrative.

[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 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.

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

You Can Not Stop You From Being Who You Are.

President Karzai Is An Incredibly Kind And Decent Man. I Had The Pleasure Of Meeting Him, And He Genuinely Cares For His People. But I Think He Had Too Much Of A Tendency To Want To Rule By Listening To All Voices At All Times.

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

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.

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