Mehreen Ahmed > Mehreen's Quotes

“Mother I had a beautiful house in Shingdi a vegetable garden Vines of bitter gourd lettuce English spinach and tousled coconut trees Coconuts fell on my darling husbands head One day we made love under the tree Now I was pregnant just like my orchard full of fruits with the love child Oh I ran as hard as I could from the shadow These were shadows of time shadows of the past ...”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae

“If one were to typify a place, then these are snapshots that need to be captured. Brazen realities frozen in time; progress impeded because of a tradition of cultural sloth. The world goes by without a moment’s reproach and I retire for the day; however, a line drones mindlessly in paradox.

“Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized on a table (The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S Eliot, 1920).”

Splendidly juxtaposed, I chuckle."

Juxtaposed Realities - Mehreen Ahmed”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“Nothing moved him. No sense of remorse could knock him back into reaction; no tears of regret flowed from those weary eyes.This seemingly innocuous episode, transpired into greater tragedy and it left him vaguely disengaged.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, The Blotted Line

“At the time she made a decision, a sensible one, in which love might or might not have had a role to play. What was more appealing, was a promise of a peaceful life that she has had until now, untouched by quandary. But that too was slipping away and she was powerless to recapture it, a virtuous relationship and its limpidness that knew neither quarrels nor deceit.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Jacaranda Blues

“In life we have no time. In death we've got all eternity.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“Under a full marmalade moon, she sat with her wedded husband in a small thatched room. Through the portal of the cane latticed window, she heard the ominous crow lapse into terrible wail, as it flew through the stooping, bunched up bamboo bush.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“She sat down on the bank of the Murma River and weeded nettles from an over grown grassy patch. Strange, she could not find any flowers in the lowland of the river bank. Silvery waves dulled under the grey cloud. It was going to rain again. She looked up. Her brother was gone. Yes, but his boat had capsized near the shores of the Siren peninsula. And that was that. It was one of the lucky stories. Boats al- ways sank in the deep seas near the Underworld.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“Quick lightening crept through unpredictably in toothed lines, followed by bellows from heavens above. Nalia began to run like a petrified black gazelle.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae

“Tinges of crimson glowed momentarily, before masses of ink and grey crowded in. Constable’s sky would not have looked more poetic on its canvas with such a spillage of riotous colours. Vapours crossed broodingly about in emptiness, right before a melt-down. Quick lightening crept through unpredictably in toothed lines, followed by bellows from heavens above. Nalia began to run like a petrified black gazelle.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“City was crowded Oh my My so many people Getting on Almost squeezed in the boat People once too many Tahu where was she in this humdrum No address Mother you werent here with me in the city Lost I am completely Lost I am drowning The boatman was but a boy The storm boat was sinking I was sinking mother and my father Tahu I was sinking...”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae

“Bloody evening sky A lonely boat travelled on the ocean of huge waves Headed in search of new land A child was born incognito People threw up everywhere No land was visible No No Conflict of free will and pre-destination; what choices could this child exercise that he was born on a boat full of riders destined to go God knows where ...?.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“You must learn to look at things without preconceptions. Trust nothing.”
― Koji Suzuki, Loop

“Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today.”
― Marcus Valerius Martialis

“A shape across space beckoned her. Her spirits sank. She thought of the other world; the temporariness of this existence. Oh! The wall, a cold wall stood between this Emma and that; this stormy morning and the sprightly spring afternoon. She walked along the solid wall for an opening. There were no exits. None at all. The sky cracked up into terrifying thunder sounds.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, The Pacifist

“Their eyes wide open, they stared into empty nothingness. There was silence everywhere. Apart from a few twinkling of stars, masses of dark void pressed down upon the atmosphere. Moments passed slowly. She could not sleep a wink. A pale light peeled the darkness off. She felt she was in slumber-land; a land of the living dead - then thoughts returned: an anguish; life appeared to be too short; it melted away so easily into bleak oblivion. She felt that she passed through space, a path designated by ethereal time. Her spirits soared like a falcon...despaired...and more...it fell into a dungeon of dark depression. Laying there. like a fallen log of a dead pine, she heard from her bed a roaring noise of the westerly knocking on the shutters of the window. It was like an ancient calling of Nemesis to wake her up to the fact that surely an end was closing in.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, The Pacifist

“The placid sea shines like an aluminium sheet rolled out to the end of the horizon.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Snapshots

“Such is the mood of the sea today, changeable and unpredictable.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Snapshots

“No living creature should have to feel so exposed in death, washed up on the beach in mangled meat of bloody distortion.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, The Pacifist

“Writing is a passion. Nurture it. Fame is incidental.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“I am the promise that cannot be broken.
I am the love that will never be severed.
I am the dream that will not be realised.
I am the desire that will burn forever.”
― Mehreen Ahmed

“Rhonda looped, as unmitigated suffering descended on her; one wave of thought crashed over another without sensible demarcation; bamboo leaves swayed in maddening winds; jaded wetness danced upon purpled drizzles on towering trapeze; grapefruit vines bottled in brine; dewdrops on her eyes. All this, as though, a nonsensical midsummer’s night dream had occurred in an enchanted forest under the influence of Puck’s flower juices, wavering in the moonlight like many of her dreams. A thin line separated reality from dream; like being on a continuum, further up, cross over to another reality; an illusory realisation of a past hollered. Our roles played, but in innate imperfection, to the tune of some charm thrust upon as disposition in this enchanted forest of life.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Jacaranda Blues

“In wakefulness she slept. In sleep, she woke up.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Jacaranda Blues

“It didn't stoop because it didn't know how to.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Jacaranda Blues

“They wept with joy, happy to see him alive. A smile crept across Fritz while being smothered in their affection, but all he could think about, and what he never forgot, were those mountains.”
― Dylan Callens, Operation Cosmic Teapot

“Moonlight is sunlight turned into moonlight”
― Richard Gradner

“We're naught but shadows and dust, suffused awhile with life and energy, forever dancing in the path to infinite disorder.”
― Rian Nejar

“Aspirations,dreams were some of the most powerful components that also held life from falling apart. They propelled life towards the fulfilment of a destiny. All those hard tests required to pass in the boot camp and outside in the Dravi community on this journey to the safe haven were worthy trade-offs thereof. The presence of the paradoxical absence of the ONE, and His selective random process as to who won and who didn't was one of those many unresolved puzzles. However, His existence was as immutable as the law of gravity to the faithful." - Moiae, Mehreen Ahmed”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae

“Does nobody understand?”
― James Joyce

“MD’s letter finally reached the village. But no one opened it. Winds glibly carried it away in casual chase and whispers of ghastly horror through the bamboo bush. The house of the Monsoon rain and the pretty pink knitting was now deserted; front yard had fallen decrepit as though struck with the dark fever of pestilence. Branches from storm lay randomly across the yard as did poles and the shack roof. Doors hung from their hinges, in the process of coming completely apart. Ravens came and sat fruitlessly in the yard in search of salted fish.”
― Mehreen Ahmed, Moirae