The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

“Israel does this, Israel does that,” Baba would say in a mock-Arabic accent. “Then do something about it! Take action. You’re Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!”

That was the year that the Shorawi completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. It should have been a time of glory for Afghans. Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the Soviet puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept flocking to Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten.

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.