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 The temporal ambiguity of trauma's passage is immediately evinced in a quotidian dialogue concerning the duration elapsed since the Taliban's recent ascendancy; my sister posits four years hic aestas (this summer), a contention I counter with the insistence upon five. Her riposte, proffered with a jocularity dissonant with the gravity of the subject, is a challenge to meticulously enumerate the intervening lunations. My gaze, meanwhile, is drawn inexorably toward the political map of Afghanistan that has become an integral part of the wall, an overlooked fixture in my environment. Towering mountains, azure (sky blue) expanses bathed in solar effulgence, and an infinite dolor (grief or suffering): this triad encapsulates my native land. The fervent aspiration arises within me to possess an amplitude (greatness of extent; largeness) of reach commensurate with the heavens, enabling an encompassing embrace of my country and its manifold tribulations. Outside, the columbidae ...