When the Moon Is Low

by Nadia Hashimi

That’s what Mahmood did. He took rusted, tired words—things people could say to one another without feeling a thing—and turned them over in the palm of his hand. He would blow the dust off and make them shine with meaning so moving you were ashamed to have overlooked it.

He’d seen the goodness in them long before they’d needed to show it.

In the darkness, when you cannot see the ground under your feet and when your fingers touch nothing but night, you are not alone. I will stay with you as moonlight stays on water.

They were frightened enough without naming the shadows.

The person most likely to drown in the river is the one who believes he can swim.

Grudges don’t die—people do.

The monster may have changed shape and color over the years, but it was steps behind him, always.

Afghanistan is a land of widows and widowers, orphans and the missing. Missing a right leg, a left hand, a child, or a mother.

He had crossed the waters once and would cross them again—accompanied not by his family but by the tiny mutations in his being that gave him the strength to do it on his own.

From our homes to our families, Afghanistan is made of clay and dust, so impermanent it can be sneezed away. And it has been, over and over again.

two thousand years of peace could be undone in a month of war.

Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day.

a makeshift grave to mark the end of a makeshift life.

Unable to communicate, we eyed one another with cautious distrust, as if we were vying against one another for a single opportunity, as if there could be only one winner among us. We wondered who had the most compelling story. Who among us was most worthy of this country’s sympathy? It was a disturbing, silent rivalry.

Saleem lived in those voids. He lived in the uninhabited spaces of night, the places where bright, cheerful faces would not be. He lived in the corners that went unnoticed, among the things people swept out the back door.

in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

It takes a lifetime to learn your parents. For children, parents are larger than life. They are strong arms that carry little ones, warm laps for sleepy heads, sources of food and wisdom. It’s as if parents were born on the same day as their children, having not existed a moment before.

Depending on the day, he may be resented, emulated, questioned, or defied.

Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls.