Background Image

...

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.

-Khaled Hosseini

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

When You Have Lived

Khaled Hosseini

...

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.

Views: 92352

Topic

More From Khaled Hosseini

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 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.

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

Whether You Do Something Or Decide To Do Nothing, Either Way, You Are Making A Moral Choice. And I Hope People Make The Right One.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Rope That Pulls You From The Flood Can Become A Noose Around Your Neck.

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.

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.

Zindagi Migzara (life Goes On)

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

Literature And Film Have A Way Of Lifting You From Your Own Existence And Transporting You To Some Foreign Place And Putting You In The Shoes With An Experience Different Than Your Own.

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.

At That Moment, She Cannot Think Of A More Reckless, Irrational Thing Than Choosing To Become A Parent.

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

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

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.

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.

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

All Good Things In Life Are Fragile And Easily Lost

We Stayed Huddled That Way Until The Early Hours Of The Morning. The Shootings And Explosions Had Lasted Less Than An Hour, But They Had Frightened Us Badly, Because None Of Us Had Ever Heard Gunshots In The Streets. They Were Foreign Sounds To Us Then. The Generation Of Afghan Children Whose Ears Would Know Nothing But The Sounds Of Bombs And Gunfire Was Not Yet Born.

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

People Learned To Live With The Most Unimaginable Things.

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.

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 Get Daily E-mails From Afghans Who Thank Me For Writing This Book [the Kite Runner], As They Feel A Slice Of Their Story Has Been Told By One Of Their Own. So, For The Most Part, I Have Been Overwhelmed With The Kindness Of My Fellow Afghans.

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.

But Then It Passed, As All Things Do.

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

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

Gone. Vanished. Nothing Left. Nothing Said.

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.

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

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

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

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

Writing For Me Is Largely About Rewriting.

The Short Of It Is, As An Aspiring Writer, There Is Nothing As Damaging To Your Credibility As Saying That You Don't Like To Read.

Aspiring Writers

You Can Not Stop You From Being Who You Are.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

A Stubborn Ass Needs A Stubborn Driver

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.

I Guess Some Stories Do Not Need Telling.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Were The Poor, Suffering Was Your Currency.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Fabio Celon Did Send Me Pages As He Progressed, Both In Black And White And Some Color Samples As Well. It Was Really Exciting To See The Sketches And To See The Story [the Kite Runner] Shaping Up Visually.

Black And White

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.

Some Stories Don't Need Telling

Yet Love Can Move People To Act In Unexpected Ways And Move Them To Overcome The Most Daunting Obstacles With Startling Heroism

After All, Life Is Not A Hindi Movie.

I Will Follow You To The Ends Of The World.

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.

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.

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.

At The Door , She Made Him Promise To Go Without Goodbyes .she Closed The Door On Him . Laila Leaned Her Back Against It , Shaking Against His Pounding Fists , One Arm Gripping Her Belly And A Hand Across Her Mouth , As He Spoke Throughout The Door And Promised That He Would Come Back For Her . She Stood There Until He Tired , Until He Gave Up , And Then She Listened To His Uneven Footsteps Until They Faded , Until All Was Quiet , Save For The Gunfire Cracking In The Hills And Her Own Heart Thudding In Her Belly , Her Eyes , Her Bones .

I Have This Almost Pathological Fear Of Boring The Reader.

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

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.

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

You Say You Have No Courage, But I See It In You. What You Did, The Burden You Agreed To Shoulder, Took Courage. For That, I Honor You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Though There Were Moments Of Beauty, Mariam Knew For The Most Part That Life Had Been Unkind To Her.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Emotional Connection

Sad Stories Make Good Books

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.

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

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.

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

Sometimes The Shifting Of Rocks Is Deep, Deep Below, And It's Powerful And Scary Down There, But That All We Feel On The Surface Is A Slight Tremor. Only A Slight Tremor.

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

Usually In Films, When Muslims Pray, It's Either Before Or After They've Blown Something Up.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Have Been A Fan Of Comic Books Since Childhood.

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 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 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 Think He Loved Us Equally, But Differently.

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 .

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Human Connection

Creating Means Vandalizing The Lives Of Other People, Turning Them Into Unwilling And Unwitting Participants. You Steal Their Desires, Their Dreams, Pocket Their Flaws, Their Suffering. You Take What Does Not Belong To You. You Do This Knowingly.

The Warlords Took Part In Atrocities During The Civil War In Afghanistan. They Looted, They Raped, They Killed. They Have Become Incredibly Empowered And Entrenched. They Live In Mansions, They Have Jobs In The Government, And They're Incredibly Powerful. In Kabul, People Don't Want To Speak About It Too Publicly, Because These People Are Essentially Like Tony Soprano.

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.

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.

They Tell Me I Must Wade Into Waters, Where I Will Soon Drown. Before I March In, I Leave This On The Shore For You. I Pray You Find It, Sister, So You Will Know What Was In My Heart As I Went Under.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

People Say That Eyes Are Windows To The Soul.

Window To The Soul

True Redemption Is...when Guilt Leads To Good.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Marriage Can Wait, Education Cannot.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Blood Is A Powerful Thing

It's Literally Just Been Formed. It's A 501 C3, Non-profit Charitable Foundation Called, Unsurprisingly, The Khalled Hosseini Foundation. The Aim Is To Help Refugees And Aim Vulnerable Women And Children.

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.

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

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.

Panic. You Open Your Mouth. Open It So Wide Your Jaws Creak. You Order Your Lungs To Draw Air, Now, You Need Air, Need It Now. But Your Airways Ignore You. They Collapse, Tighten, Squeeze, And Suddenly You're Breaithing Through A Drinking Straw. Your Mouth Closes And Your Lips Purse And All You Can Manage Is A Croak. Your Hands Wriggle And Shake. Somewhere A Dam Has Cracked Open And A Flood Of Cold Sweat Spills, Drenches Your Body. You Want To Scream. You Would If You Could. Cut You Have To Breathe To Scream. Panic.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

She Said, 'i'm So Afraid.' And I Said, 'why?,' And She Said, 'because I'm So Profoundly Happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness Like This Is Frightening.' I Asked Her Why And She Said, 'they Only Let You Be This Happy If They're Preparing To Take Something From You.

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

Nothing To Lose

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.

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.

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.

You Have Think Tanks Like The Widely Respected Atlantic Council That Have Published Reports In The Past Year That Have Called Afghanistan A Failing State.

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

Inside Laila Too A Battle Was Being Waged : Guilt On One Side, Partnered With Shame, And, On The Other, The Conviction That What She And Tariq Had Done Was Not Sinful; That It Had Been Natural, Good, Beautiful, Even Inevitable, Spurred By The Knowledge That They Might Never See Each Other Again.

Cruelty And Benevolence Are But Shades Of The Same Colour.

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

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

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.

Hills That Stand Soft And A Sky That Stands High And Blue, And The Sun Setting Behind A Windmill, And Always, Always, Hazy Strings Of Mountains That Fall And Fall Away On The Horizon.

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.

Trending Author

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Category