The Bookseller of Kabul

When a man has everything and does not know what more to do, he tries to teach his donkey to talk.

What the sounds and smells do not divulge, gossip supplies. It spreads like wildfire in the neighborhood, where everyone is watching one another's morals.

War was a central theme in maths books too. School books - because the Taliban printed books soley for boys - did not calcualte in apples and cakes, but in bullets and kalasnikovs. Something like this: 'little Omar has a kalasnikov with three magazines. There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He uses two thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels does he kill with each bullet?

Anonymity became a release, the only place to which I could turn.

In Afghanistan a woman’s longing for love is taboo. It is forbidden by the tribes’ notion of honor and by the mullahs. Young people have no right to meet, to love, or to choose. Love has little to do with romance; on the contrary, love can be interpreted as committing a serious crime, punishable by death.

They played a game of dare - who could get closest to the flames?

Do you know what is our problem? We know everything about our weapons, but we know nothing about how to use a telephone.

There are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one’s wrath on.