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Except I wasn’t sure of my world when I was sixteen. I was not sure of anything. I presented myself as a boy then, a muddled boy, full of false bravado and little hope. I would spend years in high pretense perfecting my confusion.
Teen years
Bless your soul, Bob Marley, savior of bad parties everywhere.
True!
Even this early in the morning, she smelled delicious, a subtle mélange of jasmine and cinnamon. She had great taste in perfumes and used them liberally, as though she would never wish to give off an odor that was her own.
Unnatural Emma
The beach was a scene from a disaster movie, post-event, when the survivors get together and try to make sense of what happened: was that Godzilla or Mothra that laid waste to our city?
Post trauma
was a connoisseuse of helplessness, impotence my intimate. At times, like Orpheus, I felt I could sing to life itself, to defeat the reaper if only for a little while, but I also had to watch in despair as Eurydice was dragged back into the underworld.
No use
Europe was like the light of a star that kept going long after the star itself had died.
No sanctuary, no hope, no promise.
Though she lived in a tent that had been erected in the middle of an onion field, she refused squalor. This gorgeous woman in her early twenties had an impeccably clean home that was decorated in an understated style except in one respect, the tent’s masterwork. She had studded her entire pantry with sequins, with results Liberace would have envied.
A sequin pantry
Now that was the lowest of the low and she couldn’t fall any further. She had to rely on the kindness of international governments and nongovernmental organizations for her survival. She was helpless.
No more nice dinner parties.
They arrived in Lesbos while Europe was in a quandary as to what to do with them or, more accurately, while European nations were trying to figure how to stop the refugees from entering without appearing monstrous for doing so.
European hypocrisy.
understand that these days families wait for months to get a red stamp and then wait for many more months to get a blue stamp, more for yellow or green, if they’re lucky and aren’t sent back because they turned out to be color-blind.
Bureaucracy
The hospital might have been more worn, might have looked different, atypical, but it felt quite familiar. White walls, white walls. Crow’s feet radiated from the eyes of the windows. A sickle of pale light fell on my boots.
Nice description
We observed the scene below us, the pup tents, the impromptu soccer game with no goals, the triple-strand concertina razor wire, the police vans, the far horizon where the sea and sky were joined by a thin blue thread that was never straight, as if sewn together by an incompetent seamstress. Quite a bit for the eye to fix on if it wished to avoid the discomfort of intimacy.
Refugee landscape
She insisted that even if she were blindfolded, she could tell precisely where she was on the farm by feeling the earth through her soles. She had all kinds of trees on her land, and she could name every single one of them. She knew the names of all the wildflowers she encountered, the names of all the grasses she walked over. But what good was all her knowledge now? She would have to learn names in a language not her own, on land not her own.
Missing her land
“But yesterday is gone. It’s a new day. I must forget where I came from.”
Optimism
“I didn’t lose much now. I’ve been losing everything for as long as I can remember. So have you. My son weeps for his home, but he lost it a long time ago. It’s not the same one he was born in. Everything had changed, and he wasn’t paying attention.”
Not missing much
Everything she had ever worked for was erased overnight by the war: the home she had decorated, the plants she had loved and watered, the clients she had nurtured. There must be a name somewhere for what’s not there, Miriam told you on her second interview. A few
Emphasis again on loss
She had lost too much, she had a hole in her heart, and grief had rushed in like a high tide to fill it. In time, her grief withdrew. She now had nothing except for the hole.
The hole in her heart
prefer to think that my ancestors and yours would care for the weakest among them and then bury him with garlands of flowers. Go, dear one, we send you away with yellow cockspur and daisies, cornflowers and hyacinths.
Neanderthal burial
“We live in a world that promises these young men that they will rule it,” Rasheed said. “What happens when they find out it’s all a lie? If you’re supposed to be the top dog, and suddenly you have to rely on others to throw you scraps?”
Youth
We watched them run across the street, heading back into the port. Beyond the gate stood at least a dozen boys looking at us, and behind them more and more boys, and more, ad infinitum.
Boys
I don’t approve of movement in principle. It increases your heart rate.
Grandmother
No, I did not walk the world. I flew above it, and I soared. Don’t contradict me. I told you I’m always right. Don’t argue with me. Of course I flew on my threads. Why would you believe that a woman could fly on a broom but not on threads, why? I’m ninety-nine, and I can still thread a needle by candlelight.
Wonderful
was only able see their fronts, since as every religion tells us, demons have no back, only what they wish to present to us, false fear or beguiling dazzle.
Religion
You still cling to romantic notions about writing, that you’ll be able to figure things out, that you will understand life, as if life is understandable, as if art is understandable. When has writing explained anything to you? Writing does not force coherence onto a discordant narrative.
Writing
