“America was different. America was a river, roarng along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.”

“Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts. America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins. ”

“I carry it all with me, in the quiet pools and strong currents of my being. I fill my hands with the black dirt left by the river's birth. I believe that what I hold in my hands is memory: like the river, it takes what it touches, carrying it along until all that remains is the bed over which the water flows.”

“Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.”

“Somehow you drift along on the river, and one dayyou wake up and you’re someplace you don’t want tobe, with someone you realize you don’t know.”

“When the river takes me I don't try to swim or stay afloat. I open my eyes and my mouth and let the water fill me up. I feel my lungs spasm but there's no pain, and I stop being afraid. The current carries me along. I'm flotsam, and I understand that flotsam is all I've ever been.”