Elsewhere, Home Quotes

“Death had come so close to me that I was almost exhilarated; I could see clearly that not only life but the world is transient. But with time, my heart hardened and I became immersed in the cares of day-to-day life. I had become detached from this vulnerable feeling and it was good to recapture it now and grieve once again.”
― Leila Aboulela, Elsewhere, Home

“It seemed at first to be a ghastly mistake, but that was an illusion, a mirage. The Angel of Death makes no mistakes. He is a reliable servant who never failst to keep his appointment at the predetermined time and place. Taha had no premonition of his own death. He was fidgety, impatient, but not for that, not for the end coming so soon.”
― Leila Aboulela, Elsewhere, Home

“Elaine was always on the move, not necessarily forward but sideways, up, across. She was a chess piece that made her own rules.”
― Leila Aboulela, Elsewhere, Home

“He dislikes it if I walk a few steps behind him. ‘What would people think,’ he says, ‘that we are backward, barbaric.’ He sneers at the Arab women in black abayas walking behind their men. ‘Oppressed, that’s what people would think of them. Here they respect women, treat them as equal; we must be the same,’ he says. So I have to be careful not to fall behind him in step and must bear the weight of his arm around my shoulder, another gesture he had decided to imitate to prove that, though we are Arabs and Africans, we can be modern too.”
― Leila Aboulela, Elsewhere, Home