But war had a taming effect

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's time to undo Rahim.

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.

Fiction, if done right, can bridge cultural divides. Stories can be a footpath for a reader to step into another land and view its indigenous practices and beliefs through a local lens, instead of a telescope.

That’s what being a mother is, isn’t it? Waiting for a rounded belly to tighten in readiness; listening for the sound of hunger in the moonlit hours; hearing an eager voice call even in the camouflage of traffic, loud music, and whirring machines. It’s looking at every door, every phone, and every approaching silhouette and feeling that slight lift, that tickle of opportunity to be again—mother.

Cornered mothers pray for strange things.

The elderly become invisible sooner than we would hope.

Yes, well, people are very good at destroying things, good things.

Can a mother commit a greater sin than ignoring her intuitions?

Some would call that lucky but lucky is relative

Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, every crying child we comforted- every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us.

It felt good to sit around and agree, to have a common enemy and a shared struggle. It felt good to be understood.