"What little men they are, she thought, to put women back in the burqa. She'd gotten so used to the sun that she vowed she'd die before ever hiding in the darkness again. Wearing a headscarf is one thing. She could almost understand it, if only because of tradition. But purdah - the full covering of women at all times in public - was another. The Taliban rigorously enforced it during their five-year rule. Only in the sanctuary of the household and only in front of husbands or other women could women bare their faces. This was a prison sentence for Halajan. This was death in life. Being as old as she was, almost sixty, she'd experienced life before the Taliban and life after, and now, with the renewed violence, their presence on the streets at night, and the rumors sweeping Kabul that they were plotting their comeback, the rules were growing stricter. Halajan was worried for what might come. The taste of freedom was a strong and delicious elixir that never left her mouth." pp. 28-29
"She looked back on her life as a time line of the regimes that had run her beloved Afghanistan - in the burqa and out of the burqa, in mini-skirts, back into long dresses - of the wars that took friends and family, of the droughts that caused famine and killed the roses and the trees of Kabul, and she realized she, like her country, had survived. The evils inflicted from the outside had been nowhere near as deadly as the poisons that had grown from within. One look into the black, cold eyes of a young Taliban warrior had taught her that." pg. 30
Inshallah- if Allah wills it
raffish - unconventional and slightly disreputable, especially in an attractive manner
"Why don't they teach from the heart of the Koran instead of from their own fears?
pg. 98
"but her memories of the past and fears for the feature made her heart heavy. Celebrations were a complicated mix..." pg.99
"Every project a person does, she knew, gets her one step deeper into life and closer to God." pg. 142
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