“The little girl on the planeWho turned her doll's head aroundTo look at me.”

“Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles.”

“A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.”

“Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.”

“She looked, thought Alex, like one of those wooden Russian dolls - pop off her head and a slightly smaller version would be revealed.”

“She slowly turned her head and looked at him. At his attractive, open face that could turn dark and reserved within seconds. The curve of his lips. The green eyes that looked into her a little too far and that she couldn’t defend herself against.”