Bird Summons Quotes

“One mother could look after twelve children and decades later these twelve adults would fidget and struggle to look after that one mother.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“Every holiday had a perfect length and then it turned into an indulgence, time sitting heavy on idle hands, the mind free to find fault with life left behind, too much friction between people, familiarity turning to contempt. Every holiday was a threat.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“She walked towards the sound of running water and when she reached the stream, she washed her face and then, on the spur of the moment, decided to take off her shoes and socks, make wudu and pray. The grass was her prayer mat, the wind a protector, her knees felt grounded to this particular piece of earth. She spoke to it and said, ‘Bear witness for me on the day I will need you to. On the day you will be able to speak and I will not. Say that I prayed here in this very spot and nowhere else.’ - (Page 69/70)”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“But Iman did not want the flickering images of the past to be part of the garden. War should stay out of here. Shaking windows, wailing women, burnt skin, the terrifying gleam in the whites of a young man’s eyes. Blood that was not menstrual, softness that was damaged flesh, stillness that was not sleep but death. - (Page 68/69)”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“Today at the beach, when she had planted the date tree and watered it with her tears, a connection to the land had begun. At first gentle and overpowered by Ibrahim barging in to hurt her and throw back her things, but now as she looked out at the countryside, it was reaffirmed. This could be his replacement, she thought. Not another man but a place made up of heather and hawthorn, wild cherry and birch. It was the strangest and most muddled of thoughts, but it had a zest to it. - (Page 59)”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“If she hadn’t queued for the forms, he wouldn’t have. That was their pattern, what came naturally to them both – she did the legwork and the research so that they could brainstorm and fumble towards a decision in which he would have the final word.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons: A Novel

“In every journey, there comes a point, around three quarters of the way through, when the traveller, without a guide, can go no further. But not everyone finds a guide. Not everyone accepts a guide. Not everyone is convinced. Many would rather keep fumbling on their own, trying and trying again. They would rather risk not completing the journey, they would rather risk getting lost or content themselves with the advance already made, than follow in trust.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“It was a continuation. A flow meandering but not changing direction, because the direction had always been the same. The paths might be infinite, but the destination one.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“They had moved, as she had moved symbolically, from the built monastery near the loch to the emptiness of the mountains. Left behind the hushed, thick, sombre atmosphere of organised religion and travelled up to where there was simplicity and balance. Not the indulgence of the secluded life, neither the gratification of service, nor the voluptuousness of identity. No, here was aloneness. The nothing of it. Just to be small, a conscious part of the whole”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons