Shabnam Nadiya's Blog, page 7

"For her, he swallowed the black tea of exile."

“For her, he swallowed the black tea of exile.”

- Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

"We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how..."

“We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known , who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.”

- Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera

"Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks..."

“Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they’d been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.”

- Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera, Translated by Lisa Dillman

"I’m dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the..."

“

I’m dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by. I’m dead, Makina said to herself, and hardly had she said it than her whole body began to contest that verdict and she flailed her feet frantically backward, each step mere inches from the sinkhole, until the precipice settled into a perfect circle and Makina was saved.

Slippery bitch of a city, she said to herself. Always about to sink back into the the cellar.

”

- Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera

"She was holding the hand of a child about seven years old. There was something special about her...."

“She was holding the hand of a child about seven years old. There was something special about her. She seemed stern, self-controlled, austere in her sorrow. Tears, which hardly seemed to be her own, rolled down her cheeks. And the child too was sobbing a kind of stiff-lipped “what-have-you-done-to-us.” It suddenly seemed as if she were the only who knew exactly what was happening. So much so that I felt ashamed in her presence and lowered my eyes. It was as if though there were an outcry in their gait , a kind of sullen accusation: Damn you. We also saw that she was too proud to pay us the least attention. We understood that she was a lioness, and we saw that the lines of her face had hardened with furrows of self-restraint and a determination to endure her suffering with courage, and how now, when her world had fallen into ruins, she did not want to break down before us. Exalted in their pain and sorrow above our–wicked–existence they went on their way and we could also see how something was happening in the heart of that boy, something that, when he grew up, could only become a viper inside him, that same thing that now was the weeping of a helpless child.

Something struck me like lightning. All at once everything seemed to mean something different., more precisely: exile. This was exile. This was what exile was like. This was what exile looked like.”

- Khirbet Khizeh, S. Yizhar

"Blanche had never suffered from what she called Darkies’ Disease. There was a woman among the..."

“Blanche had never suffered from what she called Darkies’ Disease. There was a woman among the regular riders on the bus she often rode home from work who had a serious dose of the disease. Blanche actually cringed when the woman began talking in her bus-inclusive voice about old Mr. Stanley, who said she was more like a daughter to him than his own child, and how little Edna often slipped and called her Mama. That woman and everyone else on the bus knew what would happen to all that close family feeling if she told Mr. Stanley, or little Edna’s mama, that instead of scrubbing the kitchen floor she was going to sit down with a cup of coffee and make some phone calls.

Loving the people for whom you worked might make it easier to wipe old Mr. Stanley’s shitty behind and take young Edna’s smart-ass, rich-kid remarks. And, of course, it was hard not to love children, or to overlook the failing of the old and infirm. They were not yet responsible in the first case and beyond it in the other. What she didn’t understnad was how you convinced yourself that you were actually loved by people who paid you the lowest possible wages; who never offered you the use of one of their cars, their cottage by the lake, or even their swimming pool; who gave you handkerchiefs and sachets for holiday gifts and gave their children stocks and bonds. It seemed to her that this was the real danger in looking at customers through love-tinted glasses. You had to pretend that obvious facts–facts that were like fences around your relationship–were not true.”

- Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam

"Why do they call you the Professor?“ I asked."Because I was a Professor,” he said,..."

“Why do they call you the Professor?“ I asked.

"Because I was a Professor,” he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing them as if to emphasise the point, “before you came and destroyed this country.”

We were getting off to an awkward start. “You know,” I said, “when this all started I opposed the war…”

“You have baked Iraq like a cake,” he said, “and given it to Iran to eat.”

He sniffed and folded his arms over his belly and closed his eyes. I pretended something on the side of the road had caught my eye. Most translators would never say anything like that to an American. We sat in silence for a while.

“Istalquaal,” I said finally, trying to draw him out. “Does that mean freedom or liberation?”

He opened his eyes a crack and looked at me sidelong. “Istalquaal? Istiqlal means independence,” he said. “Istalquaal means nothing. It means Americans can’t speak Arabic.”

- Phil Klay, Money as a Weapons System, Redeployment

"Do you think that too,” she said, “that I have slept too long in the moonlight?"

““Do you think that too,” she said, “that I have slept too long in the moonlight?””

- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

How to Comb an Old Lady's Hair

How to Comb an Old Lady's Hair

"Love is sometimes more than just blind."

“Love is sometimes more than just blind.“”

- Jonathan Lethem, Gun, with Occasional Music