A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.
I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.
Life just doesn’t care about our aspirations, or sadness. It’s often random, and it’s often stupid and it’s often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought.
![Khaled Hosseini Quote - And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/and-every-day-i-thank-god-that-i-am-alive-not-beca-683x1024.jpg)
![Khaled Hosseini Quote - And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/and-every-day-i-thank-god-that-i-am-alive-not-beca-2-683x1024.jpg)
