Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her. - Khaled Hosseini

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.

In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could — a look, a whisper, a moan — to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.

Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.