Slowly, she opened her eyes. They were met with another pair, filled with tears.

This lunatic's name was Bashan Singh, but everyone called him Toba Tek Singh.

I said let my hand go. People will see!

He was a miserable student who failed high school Urdu but went on to become the leading Urdu short story writer of his time.

He is said to be now looking for an American wife. Uncle, for God's sake help him there so that he can be saved from a sorry end.

I looked into her big eyes, cloudy and lifeless with concern, and my heart grew so hot that I could not find the right thing to say.

As long as he could feel her forehead in his hand, nothing bad could happen.

His brow immediately grew red, his rage unmistakeable.

And we are now as different as could be, unrecognizable like siblings separated at birth.

Surveying the men near him to see which ones looked more athletically inclined, he selected the members of a prospective rescue party.

Perhaps the most salient feature of North Korean literature in contrast to its southern counterpart is its eternal optimism.

Cut off by the Wall, the line lost its raison d'être decades ago and is reverting to scrub and desert.

Many a one has sunk in the abyss of horrid silence, and you among them, slender ghost whom I evoked with tools that are improbable, a little pile of grammars and of dictionaries, or now, with more urgency…

In the wake of Sept. 11, the ta'ziyeh themes—of martyrdom, doomed battle against impossible odds, and the slaughter of innocents—might be expected to offer some insight into the alien psyche of Islam.

And so we repeat the round / of night and day

I think my heart has never been / like this / so warm and red.

Why should I give up the light that I've held?

We are going to seek happiness for you and your children. All of us! Because one hand alone is useless. Are you ready?

She felt a heavy load on her shoulders. She couldn't eat, and she began to weep.

An exile's life is unstable. Ruled by fear, especially when you're so deeply involved with a language.

To describe Tehran would be like spelling out a frenzied, hourlong dinner table discussion to a complete newcomer.

“Your eyes are full of sadness, friend.”

The head belonged to one of the richest landowners in the region. The next day an army squad came into the square to replace that head with one belonging to a bearded guerrilla.

Was there anything else worth seeing? Why was I the only one hiking?

If this is life—how pure!

Our government was very generous with its citizens; it couldn't be compared to an imperialist regime.

I expect to see a person, but there is no one there. The door frame, black and empty like a grave, appears before me. Suddenly, my heart beats faster.

Prose is like a window; fiction is like a door. But it is not uncommon that he who should come in through the door jumps in through the window.

Why are so many of us going back? More precisely, why are so many going back to make films?