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water is both the harbinger of life and the messenger of death.
Dithering, the droplet has still not resolved where to fall,
The raindrop shivers.
it has no desire to solidify just yet, not before making the most of this new phase of its life.
Water remembers. It is humans who forget.
With two hydrogen atoms at the tips, each bonded to a single oxygen at the center, it is a bent molecule, not linear. If it were linear, there would be no life on earth…no stories to tell.
It carries within the memories of its previous lives.
Heart, liver, stomach, lungs, neck, eyes, soul…It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.
The ear never forgets what the heart has heard.”
“That is what happens when you love someone—you carry their face behind your eyelids, and their whispers in your ears, so that even in deep sleep, years later, you can still see and hear them in your dreams.”
They vilify us not because they know us well. Quite the opposite: they do not know us at all.”
“Well, this world is a school and we are its students. Each of us studies something as we pass through. Some people learn love, kindness. Others, I’m afraid, abuse and brutality. But the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. The ones who choose not to inflict their suffering on to others. And what you learn is what you take with you to your grave.”
“Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire—because they want to have them in their possession. It’s all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It’s all out of fear! Then there is the third kind—when people hate those they have hurt.”
“Because the tree remembers what the axe forgets.”
Zaleekhah has no idea what it means, and has not tried to find out; she just happened to like the sound of it.
It b like that
“I’m sorry.” She does not know to whom she is apologizing: to her uncle, for not sharing the news with him until now; to her husband, for not trying harder to save their marriage; or to herself, for not leaving him before.
Water hardens in adverse circumstances, not unlike the human heart.
Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.
Certainty is neither needed nor something she would trust.
return to water.
Water is the best cure for melancholy.
The water inside us communes with the water outside us.
The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.
While it is true that the body is mortal, the soul is a perennial traveler—not unlike a drop of water.
If, as the poets say, the journey of life resembles the march of rivers to the sea, at times meandering aimlessly, at others purposeful and unswerving, the bend in the flow is where the story takes a sudden turn, winding away from its predicted course into a fresh and unexpected direction.
like a vivid sequel to a fading dream.
More and more, he comes to realize that people fall into three camps: those who hardly, if ever, see beauty, even when it strikes them between the eyes; those who recognize it only when it is made apparent to them; and those rare souls who find beauty everywhere they turn, even in the most unexpected places.
How strange that having money makes one feel less safe.
finding a crevice of comfort between the dark of the night and the promise of a new day.
Her mind numbs, arriving at an emptiness that allows her to hold every fear and sadness without hurting. In that liminal state in which the border between the present and the past disappears, memories, no longer contained by gravity, float like feathers in the air around and above her. She remembers things she wanted to believe she had forgotten. Before she knows it, the feathers are smothering her, covering her mouth, blocking her nostrils. She gulps air, chest heaving. She knows that if she does not run fast enough, she will drown in her past.
Time is circles within circles.
For every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it.
“All too often, we humans destroy nature and call it progress.”
the making of a new self requires the unmaking of an old one.
The sun is weak when it first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day goes on.”
“I know you don’t believe me, Narin, but a story is a flute through which truth breathes. And these are your family stories.”
One must always walk the earth with wonder, for it is full of miracles yet to be witnessed.
She says, just like two drops of rain join on a windowpane, weaving their paths slowly and steadily, an invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet.
Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciates small acts of kindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time.
“Remember, for all its pains and sorrows, the world is beautiful. How can it not be, when it is painted in the iridescent colors of the plumes of Melek Tawûs? If we know how to look, we can see beauty even with eyes closed.”
Doubt is corrosive for the traveler,
That’s the thing about failing: either it makes you super-afraid of failing again or, somehow, you learn to overcome fear.”
As they say, in this part of the world, if you run too fast, you will miss the safe place where you might have hidden yourself.”
After a while, nowhere feels foreign to someone who has woken, day after day, in unfamiliar rooms and unknown places.
“Where you have set your mind begin the journey Let your heart have no fear, keep your eyes on me.”
There is always another side, a forgotten side.
confined, as if trapped inside a snow globe, which at any moment may be picked up and shaken.
“Use my eyes as a mirror to admire your own beauty.”
To write is to free yourself from the constraints of place and time. If the spoken word is a trick of the gods, the written word is the triumph of humans.
The goddess of knowledge and storytelling is imagined in the deepest shade of blue.
