I'm Gladly Doing My Own Thing For

Hassan And I Fed From The Same Breasts. We Took Our First Steps On The Same Lawn In The Same Yard. And, Under The Same Roof, We Spoke Our First Words. Mine Was Baba. His Was Amir. My Name. Looking Back On It Now, I Think The Foundation For What Happened In The Winter Of 1975 —and All That Followed— Was Already Laid In Those First Words.

The Novel [the Kite Runner] Came About As An Expansion Of That Original, Unpublished Short Story.

Her Impulse, Her Need, To Be The Corrector Of Injustices, Warden Of The Downtrodden Flock. And

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.

It Turned Out That, Like Satan, Cancer Had Many Names.