The world won’t get more or less terrible if we’re indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate.
Contempt, disdain, scorn: these emotions were stops along a closed loop that originated and terminated in a sense of superiority.
I will not be in here for ever, I promise. All metaphors need to come up for air. When I can bear no more of separation, when I have learnt all that absence can teach me of desire, the walls will shimmer and I will step out of the mirage, into your arms, to lose myself and find myself.
In his prison poems, the bars on his windows are merely the grid through which he sees shooting stars, each lash of a whip is a reminder of the insecurity of tyrants, and a rumour that orders for his execution have been dispatched is reason to weep for the executioner.
Why didn’t you stay?” she had whispered against the unyielding stone. Why didn’t you stay? She pressed the berry against her lips. Why didn’t I ask you just one more time to stay? Sajjad stood up quietly and walked over to her. “There is a phrase I have heard in English: to leave someone alone with their grief. Urdu has no equivalent phrase. It only understands the concept of gathering around and becoming ‘ghum-khaur’ – grief-eaters – who take in the mourner’s sorrow.
I’ve lived through Hitler, Stalin, the Cold War, the British Empire, segregation, apartheid, God knows what. The world will survive this, and with just a tiny bit of luck so will everyone you love.
The volume was off, allowing for some pleasing moments of synchresis, such as when the dogs were released from their cages just as the front door was hurled open by a drunk, or when the strip light overhead started to buzz and the on-field umpire batted midges away from his face.
By the time the first light appeared in the sky she felt herself transformed by the desire to be known, completely.
I’ll read to you,” Elizabeth said. “Any preferences?” “Evelyn Waugh.” “Really? How strange.” “That’s what Konrad said. He said Waugh is for readers who know the English and understand what’s being satirised. And I told him that maybe the books are better when you don’t know it’s satire and just think it’s comedy.” Elizabeth considered this. “You’re probably right. I find him much too cruel. And almost unbearably sad.” Hiroko’s.
He put his arm around me. That was all. He put his arm around me and we didn’t say a word.
Konrad had been right to say barriers were made of metal that could turn fluid when touched simultaneously by people on either side.
Some irritations dissipate in a marriage, some accumulate.
Laughing, he said, “Cancer or Islam – which is the greater affliction?
I’m acting a little crazy, aren’t I?” she said. “I’m sorry. Please bear with me. Please.” She rested the back of her hand against his cheek, a touch he’d never had from her before.
She felt, as she did most mornings, the deep pleasure of daily life distilled to the essentials: books, walks, spaces in which to think and work.
Or even better, jigari dost – a friendship so deep it was lodged within you, could not be cut out without leaving a profound, perhaps fatal, wound.
I hate the Muslims who make people hate Muslims, he’d replied quietly.
He knew it was a paramount failure of friendship to disappear into a relationship, but to be in his friends’ company now felt like stepping back into the aimlessness that had characterized his life before Aneeka came along and became both focus and direction.
On remembering that there was no correlation between evil and competence.
You think marriage is in the large things, Mrs. Rahimi had once said. It’s in the small things. Can you survive the arguments about housework, can you learn to live with each other’s different TV viewing habits.