“The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.”

“Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence.”

“We had seen too many horrors already, and we could see and hear more explosions all around us as the war continued, very close to our hiding place; machine gun fire and the sounds of grenades – all very frightening.”

“To anyone else, Xavier's use of the word angel would have sounded like nothing more than a lovesick teenager professing his admiration. Only the two of us knew differently and now we both shared a secret- that brought us closer than ever. It was as if we had just sealed the bond between us, closed the gap, and made it final.”

“At night my father often heard sporadic gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. If the war came closer, soon there would be only minor difference between shooting a dog and shooting a man.”

“We were new then, our lives stretched out before us. Our families had let us go. Abbott had yet to find us. For this very short time, it would be just the two of us - just two kids.”