Nadia Hashimi

“As children inch their way into adolescence, the parent changes. He is an authority, a source of answers, and a chastising voice. Depending on the day, he may be resented, emulated, questioned, or defied.Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls. Saleem had only bits and pieces of his father, mostly the memories of a young boy. He would spend the rest of his life, he knew, trying to reconstruct his father with the scraps he could recall or gather from his mother.”

“To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again.”

“We were pressed against each other, a husband and wife bound together not by marriage, but by the harmony of our hearts. Death could not undo us, I'd learned. My hamsar was with me still. He would watch over us, my beloved husband, as we made our way into tomorrow.”

“He believes that people have destroyed religion and religion has destroyed people. He says he believes in God, but he doesn't believe in people.”

“What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens.”

“An entire lifetime can change in one afternoon. The rest of the world can continue on, unaware of a quiet, solitary cataclysm occurring a few feet away.”

“It's time to undo Rahim.”

“What he wanted to say was that two thousand years of peace could be undone in a month of war.”

“Do as you must -- you are not a child. But understand that there are many people willing to make your life more difficult. It is up to you to find a way to make things easier for yourself.”

“We all cross a hundred peaks to get even this far. And there will be more before we each make it to whatever God has fated for us.”

“But war had a taming effect”

“Children are touched by heaven—their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children”

“Children always forgive their mothers. That's the way God's designed them. He gives them two arms, two legs, and a heart that will cry 'mother' until the day it stops beating.”