My mother died the day I was born. I now know that this was in no way unusual, but for the first years of my life, I felt quite singled out by the hand of God. She was a great loss to me, my first loss, though I never knew her. My nurse often told me that I have her bright eyes.
My name is Fawad, and my mother tells me I was born under the shadow of the Taliban.
From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester's Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down. Cars trundled along Main Street, flashing up winks of sun. The steeple of the Congo Church looked sharp enough to pierce the unblemished sky. The sun raced along the surface of Prestile Stream as the Seneca V overflew it, both plane and water cutting the town on the same diagonal course.
Why would a man he never knew build him a home on one of the most spectacular beaches on the West Coast?
The phone rang at a little before one in the morning and I knew it was my mother. I didn't even have to look at the number there on the little cell- phone screen, I just said, "Mom." Next to me, my not- really- girlfriend, Gloria, heaved over and jammed a pillow on her head and said nasty stuff about people calling in the middle of the night. I ignored this and added, "Anything wrong?"
My mother said, "No, of course not. Why do you always ask that when I call you?"
"Because that's what people do when they get a call at one A.M. You forgot about the time zones again."
"I didn't forget. I thought soldiers always rose at dawn."
"When they're on duty," I said, "which I'm not. I'm at Gloria's place. What's up?"
"I'm at Heathrow on a plane for Zurich. I'll be gone for a couple of weeks. Could you tell your father?"
"Why don't you tell him yourself ? I think they still have phone service in the District of Columbia."
"Please, Theo. If I call him we'll get into a big argument, and I don't need that just now."
"Because you're going to Zurich for a few weeks? Why should he object to that?"
"Because I'm not going to Zurich. I'm just changing planes there. I'm going to Lahore."
That stopped me; sweat popped on my arms where they stuck out of the quilt. I said, "Lahore? Mom, you can't go to Lahore. There's a fatwa out on you. You can't go to the Muslim world anymore."
(A bit more than just a paragraph this time!)
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.Of course, Tally thought, you'd have to feed your cat only salmon-colored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right. The scudding clouds did look a bit fishy, rippled into scales by a high-altitude wind. As the light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold.
Any other summer, a sunset like this would have been beautiful. But nothing had been beautiful since Peris turned Pretty. Losing your best friend sucks, even if its only for three months and two days.
Papi's house was a white painted wooden structure with drywood termites in the attic and bottles of beer and ammonia under the kitchen sink. The termites were eating their way down the kitchen studs behind the plaster and into the kitchen doorjamb. The beer, according to Gram, was eating its way through Joshua's soul and down into his game leg. Aristophanes Ball was born in Papi's house. He was born in his mother's bed in Papi's house on a steaming Florida summer evening with a white plastic sheet beneath him and the thick smell of ammonia all around him. He was born soft and shriveled and his small body kept folding back into its fetal position, making it difficult for the midwife to clean the mess off him. His head was encased in wet, black hair; his arms and legs were sticky bent twigs; his buttocks was practically nonexistent and his sexual appendages were still tucked part way inside him and had to be coaxed out with finger filled plastic gloves.
Bella,
Hearts on a String by Kris RadishThe story her great-grandmother told was simple, lovely, and unforgettable.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
The good news is that I've had only one roommate this past semester. The bad news is that she plays Enya night and day. At this point, it's questionable what's going to happen first-- graduation from college or drowning myself in the Orinoco Flow.
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
He was still alive and that was bad. He had volunteered for the scouting group, hoping that if he ventured close enough to the enemy line, a sniper would take him down and it would be over. Dead. His sins would be absorbed by the scorched battlefield and he would float up to the paradise he had envisaged so vividly as a child. God would be there to absolve him for following the others, for not standing up and rebelling against the fanatics, but would understand and forgive, and walk with him through the gates of heaven.
Was there ever a single moment about which you later wondered, "What would my life be like now if that hadn't happened?" Would the present be the same or completely different? And do we really make choices about what will happen to us, or is it all in the hands of fate?
London's East End was rather a dicey place, but that's where I found myself, a fifteen-year-old youngster with more sand than sense, on the night of 8 November 1888.
Houston deputy district attorney Jillian Samuels did not believe in magic.She didn't throw pennies into wishing wells, didn't pluck four-leaf clovers from springtime meadows, didn't blow out birthday-cake candles, and didn't wish on falling stars.
March unleashed a torrent of rainfall after an abnormally dry winter. A cold front out of Canada then descended and was held in place by a swirling wind that roared down the George from eastern Oregon. Although spring was surely just around the corner, the god of winter was not about to relinquish its hard-won dominion without a tussle. There was a blanket of new snow in the Cascades, and a rain was now freezing on impact with the frigid ground outside the house; enough reason for Mack to snuggle up with a book and a hot cider and wrap up in the warmth of a crackling fire.
Congratulations. The fact that you're reading this means you've taken one giant step closer to surviving till your next birthday. Yes, you, standing there leafing through these pages. Do not put this book down. I'm dead serious-- your life could depend on it.
Standing next to their battered Humvee, Jim, Martin and Frankie stared into the distance. A cemetery stretched off to the horizon along both sides of New Jersey's Garden State Parkway, and the highway cut right through the graveyard's center. Thousands of tombstones thrust upward to the sky, surrounded by tenements and overgrown vacant lots. Tombs and crypts also dotted the landscape, but the sheer number of gravestones almost overwhelmed them.
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake