The Temporary Bride Quotes

“Herbs carried in special baskets, bread wrapped in knotted, muslin cloths, thick stews soured with unripe grape juice, carrots boiled with sugar and rosewater, yoghurt hung from dripping bags, its whey dried in sheets on trays in the sun.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“.. a country where women are compared to food, her breasts like pomegranates, her lips like ripe dates.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“It is an adjustment to be in the kitchen with a stranger, a man, after growing used to the meticulous calm of housewives. When I knock on Ali’s door at the time he’d mimed to me with his fingers, he answers wearing only a pair of pale, green underpants. He picks soil from his fingernails with a kitchen knife while I lean over the sink to scrub my hands. When I try to determine what he wants to be paid for teaching me to cook, he just shrugs his shoulders and looks up at the tall, black-domed ceiling.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“.. the torshi shops in Bistodoh Bahman Square where vegetables, roots, even young pine cones are pickled, swimming in buckets of caraway seeds and vinegar.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“That transactions at the market, at the rice seller, in the narrow archways of the gold bazaar were belaboured exchanges of tuts and hisses, whispered offers with lowered eyes, counter-offers protested while patting empty wallets in pockets. That upon agreeing a suitable price, buyer and seller would shake hands three times, reach into stashes of tightly rolled banknotes tucked into nylon socks and secret compartments hand-sewn into underpants.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“Husbands take photographs of their wives and children in front of a fountain and call out to the boys who rush back and forth, carrying trays of tea and wrinkly, black dates. We sit at opposite ends of a large wooden bench covered in rugs and pillows; a spot more suited to a courting couple than the two of us who have nothing to say.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“The sole tie that binds us is his mother and her kitchen, and the meals I watch disappear down his throat. If my daily presence in his house seems even vaguely novel to him, he gives very little away. His face is always distant, absorbed in faraway things, his prickliness feels as if it would take months to break down.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“Placing my key on the reception desk, I imagine him a few kilometres away, stepping over his parents in the dark on the way to the kitchen to drink a glass of water, spashing a handful over his hair in an attempt to flatten it down. I picture his mother stirring slightly as he gargles and spits toothpaste into the sink. Clutching Vahid’s note to my chest I slip the heavy wooden bolt guarding the hotel’s entrance to the side with a thud, and slip away into the cool morning air.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“Their veil-muffled voices became loud and crisp. It felt strangely intimate to see them this way, the shapes and textures of their hair, the red lipstick on their mouths, the fact that some of them preferred pink t-shirts to blue, things few men would ever see. ”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“They ask questions for which we have no answers, and we don’t care to explain ourselves. For there is no term for what we are to an another. We can’t sit next to each other on buses or hold hands in the park. But we watch over and guard and feed each other, a kind of makeshift family, caught up in long and endless restraint.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“I pull my scarf forward to hide the blonde streaks of my hair and avoid using my hands - the giveaway of a European background - when I speak, which I do while looking across at the horizon or down at my feet. We direct the things we tell each other to my black, pointed ballerina flats or the shoelaces of his brown loafers, matching them as best as we can with disinterested expressions. I don't imagine we are fooling anyone.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran

“Separated by the polite distance of a green table, we easily could be strangers, counting our change and settling down for a treat. The bazaar is loud, even from the refuge of this archway, with the shouting of prices and hammering of copper.”
― Jennifer Klinec, The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran