The Confusion of Languages Quotes

“We depend on this give-and-take when living abroad. You can’t exile yourself from your homeland and not always feel that tidal pull of return. Those minor details, the commercial jingles and pop songs, the chain restaurants and decade-defining shades of our blue jeans, are details you don’t even think about until you are face-to-face with a society that has very little to do with your own. Suddenly those one-hit wonders become a secret language, the very vestige of American culture.”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages

“Sure, people stare… I think it’s curiosity. Most of the time if I give a big smile, the person looks totally shocked to have been caught and will smile back. They go from a sort of blankness to this welling gladness. Women especially blossom into joy and will give really lovely, open smiles in return, with a ilhamdallah or masha’allah and a pat on the head or a pinched cheek for Mather, maybe a few words for me, Welcome to Jordan! They’re so surprised and grateful I’m smiling at them! Even women who are fully covered, just a tiny window for their eyes peeking from a veil. You can see the uplift in the corners of their eyelids, feel their genuine warmth”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages

“expatSure, people stare… I think it’s curiosity. Most of the time if I give a big smile, the person looks totally shocked to have been caught and will smile back. They go from a sort of blankness to this welling gladness. Women especially blossom into joy and will give really lovely, open smiles in return, with a ilhamdallah or masha’allah and a pat on the head or a pinched cheek for Mather, maybe a few words for me, Welcome to Jordan! They’re so surprised and grateful I’m smiling at them! Even women who are fully covered, just a tiny window for their eyes peeking from a veil. You can see the uplift in the corners of their eyelids, feel their genuine warmth.”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages

“Those who have lived abroad know exactly what I mean. Our status as Americans creates an instantaneous, rarified friendship. You are in a fast food restaurant where they have odd things on the menu, makluba, zaatar, soojouk, and you are scrambling for something you recognize, pizza, or even pita, and then you hear that perfect Hello or How you doing? You gravitate toward that table of strangers, desperate, dear God, speak to me, fellow outsiders in in appropriate revealing clothing, seak to me American sweet nothings of sports and reality T.V. It’s the same anywhere. You reach for the known in an unknown place. You become friends with someone you wouldn’t be able to stand if you actually had options. Our history of Super Bowl commercials and expectations of flushable toilet paper seal us together.”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages

“There was so much he could have said and chose not to. “I didn’t pry into your past, Margaret. I don’t pry into your life before we met, so don’t do it to me.”
And that was it, there was nothing more to say. I nodded my head and ever since I’ve made myself comfortable in this limbo of not knowing. Sleepless in this bed I made.”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages

“I want to believe he's trying; isn't that what this is all about, what everything is all about, marriage, parenting, life? Just trying to do the best you can as often as you can?”
― Siobhan Fallon, The Confusion of Languages