And the Mountains Echoed

by Khaled Hosseini

“For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.”

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

Absent for all the meals Thalia and Mamá have shared at this table, the laughs, the quarrels, the stretches of boredom, the illnesses, the long string of simple rituals that make up a lifetime. Entering my childhood home is a little disorienting, like reading the end of a novel that I’d started, then abandoned, long ago.

“But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.”