Baba Quotes

“A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

“That was when Baba stood up. It was my turn to clamp a hand on his thigh, but Baba pried it loose, snatched his leg away. When he stood, he eclipsed the moonlight. ‘I want you to ask this man something,’ Baba said. He said it to Karim, but looked directly at the Russian officer. ‘Ask him where his shame is.’ They spoke. ‘He says this is war. There is no shame in war.’ ‘Tell him he’s wrong. War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.‘”

“With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

“Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every sin is a variation of theft.”

“Then he saw me and waved. Smiled. He motioned for me to wear my mortarboard, and took a picture of me with the school’s clock tower in the background. I smiled for him – in a way, this was his day more than mine. He walked to me, curled his arm around my neck, and gave my brow a single kiss. ‘I am moftakhir, Amir,’ he said. Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look.”

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime…”

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything”

“For me America was a place to bury memories. For Baba a place to mourn his.”