“It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.”

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.”

“Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.”

“But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her”

“The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.”

“If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting.”

“In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.”