Wow...
Quotes:
The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a.
Bamiyan, the city of the giant Buddha statues.
laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate—sadly, almost a national affliction;
Baba 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.
“Good,” Baba said, but his eyes wondered. "Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft."
Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules.
Ali shut the gates behind us. I heard him mutter a prayer under his breath—he always said a prayer when his son left the house.
The immensely popular Ahmad Zahir had revolutionized Afghan music and outraged the purists by adding electric guitars, drums, and horns to the traditional tabla and harmonium; on stage or at parties, he shirked the austere and nearly morose stance of older singers and actually smiled when he sang—sometimes even at women.
I finally had what I’d wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.
We dined the traditional way, sitting on cushions around the room, tablecloth spread on the floor, eating with our hands in groups of four or five from common platters.
I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”
Rahim Khan barked a bitter laughter. “It was Homaira and me against the world. And I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”
Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.
Up to that point, our encounter could have been interpreted as a respectful inquiry, one man asking for the whereabouts of another man. But I’d asked her a question and if she answered, we’d be…well, we’d be chatting.
It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.
“What’s going to happen to you, you say? All those years, that’s what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question.”
Blood is a powerful thing, bachem, never forget that.”
Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought. A way to be good again.
As an Afghan, I knew it was better to be miserable than rude.
“Beard Patrol”
He leaned toward me, like a man about to share a great secret. “You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you’re doing God’s work. It’s breathtaking.”
What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace.
And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.
In Afghanistan, the ending was all that mattered.
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.
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