DESPITE THE FALLING SNOW. Quotes

“uninviting, inscrutable,”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“She looks surprised, and then suspicious. “What do you mean?” “I mean that smells and scents have strong evocations for people, and usually, when you cannot place what is making you comfortable with someone or some place, it is often the smell of them.” It is the longest sentence he has spoken to her, and she likes the sound and timbre of his voice. It is reassuring and gentle. “Are you trying to get me to smell you?” “No,” he laughs. “Only if you want to.” “No, thank you. Some things should be kept for the future.” She cannot think why she has said that. About the future. Without any thought, it just flew out of her mouth, and now he is smiling, he looks happy, as though he is hoping to see her again. She smiles too, suddenly. After all, something has drawn her to this man; perhaps his eyes, which are open and honest and intelligent. “How old are you?” she asks. “Do you want to guess?” “No,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “I just want to know. I can’t tell from the look of you, whether you are eighteen or thirty.” “I am twenty five” “Like me.” She smiles, as though this satisfies her in some way, and then she closes her eyes. Etched into the skin between those eyes is a furrow of concentration. Alexander watches her, pausing only to ask the girl to pour two more drinks. When Katya opens her eyes, she sees the young man standing before her with his own eyes tightly shut, and a look of absorption on his face. She laughs. “What are you doing?” “I’m trying to see what you were concentrating on so suddenly.” “And? What was it?” “The music?” he ventures, and she smiles her affirmation. The musicians are playing more quietly now, and are almost drowned out under the rising of voices made freer by alcohol and laughter, but the music is there, behind everything, and it is soft and emotive. An older man has joined them, and with his balalaika is wafting a mournful tune that twines out over the heads of the crowd like a long curl of blue-tinged smoke. “I love this song,” Katya says, so quietly that Alexander can barely hear her. “So do I. Doesn’t it remind you of your childhood?” “Yes. That’s exactly it.” She looks away from him. “My grandmother used to sing it. She’d make my father play the piano to accompany her, and she’d sing it to my brother and me before we went to sleep.” “Is she still alive?” Katya shakes her head, but offers nothing more and Alexander looks around, at the deaf crowd, and then back at the liquid eyes of the girl before him. “Nobody can hear it except for us, I think.” “Perhaps he is only playing it for us,” she suggests. Alexander smiles at the idea. “Yes,” he says, and he quickly asks her to dance again, for she seems to be on the verge of tears, as she stands there, alone, listening. His question wakes her from some faraway reverie, from unbid”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Chapter Twenty Three”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“ACCLAIM FOR “DESPITE THE FALLING SNOW”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“eerily”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“is hardly more gripping the second time around, and”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“You’re not used to it, are you?”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Nevertheless, she likes it,”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“slim volumes;”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“have been passing overheard comments up through thin-walled buildings. The speech was made at a closed Congress session but Alexander is pleased that their leader’s forthright, shocking denouncement of his predecessor Stalin is becoming known to the people outside. The sense of openness, of freedom that has made some of them light-headed at work over the past weeks will start to infect others too. How can that be bad? As if he has been listening to his friend’s thoughts, Misha turns to him. “And what do you think about Comrade Khrushchev’s brave speech, my friend? That the “cult of the individual” mustn’t happen again?” He pauses and takes a drag on his cigarette. “That old man Stalin was a cantankerous, bloody-minded butcher all along?” Misha smiles thinly, and exhales a long stream of smoke upwards. Alexander does not smoke. He used to, as a teenager, but as a young man, the residual taste of tar, the insidious smell of ash in his clothes, bothers him. “I think it’s about time,” Alexander replies. “People will see that things are different now. Really different.” Misha slaps him on the back. “Such an idealist, Sasha.” He smiles, but the smile is forced, and when he speaks next, his voice has lowered so that only Alexander can hear him. “You do remember that our beloved leader Nikita Sergeyevitch was around during all that terror. Doing his part?” The soft tones are a precaution, one that may or may not be necessary here, but Misha, like all of them, cannot get used to any other”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“THE ROOM IS WARM, AND FULL. Most of them are young, about his own age, their chatter filling up the peeling high arches that sweep across the ceiling above them. There are lights, and laughter, and glasses that touch each other musically; an unfamiliar feeling of excess and even decadence that forms a welcome illusion for certain moments during this evening. For certain moments, from certain angles, with his eyes half shut, he can see that the long, narrow room in this apartment belonging to Misha’s friends has suddenly regained some of the elegance and life that perhaps filled it so often in another, pre-revolutionary lifetime. There is a small window at his back, and when he feels a cold draught touch his jacket, he turns, and the preternatural glow of the snow lighting the gloom outside attracts him and makes him look. On the street below he sees a small boy and an old lady. Both are carrying large bundles on their backs. Both look small and frail under their loads and he watches them for a long minute until they move around the corner of the building and are lost to sight. Probably they are carrying home wood to try and warm their rooms. Or room. He looks at his watch. It is ten o’clock. It is becoming hot at the party, and Alexander runs a finger along his slender neck, under his collar and tie. “You look like a government man,” Misha had told him, with no small measure of sarcasm, when he picked him up. “Don’t you have any casual clothes? This is not one of your state department cocktail parties, you know.”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Chapter Twenty”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Chapter Eighteen”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Acknowledgements Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Boston”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Moscow – March 1956”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“Boston – November 1998”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“seemed”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“between”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“building”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“The shiny, varnished seating,”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“she guesses and she is briefly grateful that the large quadrant”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow

“SHE HAS BEEN SITTING ON A WOODEN BENCH in the courtyard”
― Shamim Sarif, Despite the Falling Snow