Hira Mandi Quotes

“But in February, the Mullahs prohibited the Basant festival, uncaring of the disappointed children who waited every year for this extraordinary jubilation, just as children in the west wait for Father Christmas. There was a formal prohibition on flying pigeons and kites. The pigeons because they symbolized the souls of Sufi saints and protected their mausoleums. The kites because flying them from the roofs invaded women’s privacy.”
― Claudine Le Tourneur d'Ison, Hira Mandi

“The time for candid happiness was over. Laila had taken everything with her to her tomb. He had thought life was impossible without her, and had been prepared to join her if he hadn’t understood that such an act would have killed Naseem. No more tragedies! The neighbourhood had had its fair share of those. Women were battered, mistreated and abandoned every day. That deceitful Jinnah, proclaiming loud and clear that in coming to Pakistan and leaving discrimination and contempt behind in India, Muslims would be free and respected. Yet what had these women seen but the same discrimination, the same contempt, but this time in the sacred name of Islam which went even further to proclaim prostitution as the worst damnation?”
― Claudine Le Tourneur d'Ison, Hira Mandi