“He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. ”

“Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila.”

“At times, he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words. But he said he liked the enhancing sounds the Arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue. He said they comforted him, eased his heart. "They'll comfort you to . Mariam jo," he said. "You can summon then in your time of your need, and they won't fail you. God's words will never betray you, my girl.”

“with a thug of a string, i'd cut loose my pain, my longing...”

“If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.”

“All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.”

“Except that wasn't all. The real fun began when a kite was cut. That was where the kite runners came in, those kids who chased the windblown kite drifting through the neighborhoods until it came spiraling down in a field, dropping in someone's yard, on a tree or a rooftop. The chase got pretty fierce; hordes of kite runners swarmed the streets, shoved past each other like those people from Spain I'd read about once, the ones who ran from the bulls. One year a neighborhood kid climbed a pine tree for a kite. A branch snapped under his weight and he fell thirty feet. Broke his back and never walked again. But he fell with the kite still in his hands. And when a kite runner has his hands on a kite, no one could take it from him. That wasn't a rule. That was a custom.”