The Kite Runner

two blond girls, tall, advance on a seated brown girl; two brown children ride away fast on their bicycles. These flashes bear a certain kinship to the memories of survivors of trauma, and share the basic confusion. Distress, fear, violence without a known cause turns inward, and grows. Without language, a child believes it is all her own fault.

The terror and consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever loved a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will.