> It may be unfair,
but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the
course of a whole lifetime...
> 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.
> 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.
> People say that eyes are windows to the soul.
> Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything.
> 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 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?
> There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.
> 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 brought Hassan/s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.
> That was a long time ago, but 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> People say that eyes are windows to the soul.
> Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything.
> 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 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?
> There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.
> 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 brought Hassan/s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.
> That was a long time ago, but 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.
> 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.
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