It is true in that almost every scene is based on a story told to me by an Afghan, either inside of Afghanistan, or in the refugee camps in Pakistan. I knew several Western women married to Afghans in Peshawar when I lived in Pakistan. Many of these women worked in the refugee camps as teachers, interpreters, relief workers, medical aides, doctors, and nurses. The story of Najmah witnessing the death of her mother and brother was based on a story told to me by an Afghan girl who saw her mother killed in her village in northern Afghanistan. The girl’s father brought her and her sisters to live in Massachusetts, where memories of life in wartime Afghanistan still haunt her. It was difficult to write about these things. But as I’ve thought of these women’s stories and realized that Americans have trouble imagining Afghanistan, I began to write and those stories told to me by Afghans was all that I could think about.