I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? Quotes

“The world still overflows with the goodness of humanity and with souls who open the windows of their spirit to fill their interior peace with distant vistas, because compassionate hearts are a power.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“Allow the person you’re looking for to search for you.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“People devote more effort to correcting the errors of the past than they do to improving the future. In Seattle, Basra, Baghdad, and other places, you can see the past’s skiff tugging on the wrist of every pedestrian or passenger. This is the invisible skiff we drag with us over dry land. The fact that no one acknowledges its existence makes it very powerful. The skiff that accompanies me bumps a lot when I drag it through the city’s streets. It delays me at every turn. Memory’s film clips, which encircle this skiff, make it capsize and wobble, capsize and wobble.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“The world seems to be smaller than the eye of a needle,” my mother used to say. But it returns to its normal, infinite size when we aren’t crazy in love with anyone, because love is a minimizing glass that collects and reduces the size of the whole world until it fits into the palm of one hand.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“If it had been Morise, even if it hadn’t been Morise. I had to work hard to free myself from my feeling that he was the lord of the city and its shaykh, on whose crown falcons dozed, because everything in Seattle pointed to him and led toward him—each detail and sign. He did not merely dwell in this city; he was its creator, who had woven it from warp and woof. He had re-created it and then shaken the dust off it as if it were a carpet from Tabriz. Everything in the city carried his signature and his fingerprint: the joyful queues on weekends at pot stores, the empty seats in outdoor cafés sprinkled by drops of rain, girls’ colorful wool caps, tech workers’ badges dangling to their laps, the panting of elderly Asians climbing its heights… the spoons of busy restaurants clicking against the teeth of children of wealthy Indians, the helmets of cyclists who pause to look at the tranquility of the Japanese Garden, the sigh of buses as they lower a lift for an elderly white woman in a wheelchair, the roars of laughter of Saudi teens in the swimming pools of the University…all these tell his story. Everything glorifies his name.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“It isn’t right for your moments to collapse beneath the feet of some other person or for you to refuse to see yourself without him. It is a massive error for us to put our lives on hold for one individual and to deny ourselves any worth without him—for us to be unable to imagine ourselves without him. Imagine yourself after him. Re-create your Self beyond that forbidding barrier, and cross over with us to life. Leap on board the ship.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“He kept his head bowed while he said these things, but I felt we were looking each other in the eye, because my head was also bowed. Faces looking in different directions see each other at some point in space, especially when these are harmonious faces or ones linked by a clear tie of sincere affection. I reflected on a non-Euclidean geometry lesson that said two straight, parallel lines meet at a point somewhere—even the rays from my glances and those from his tearful eyes.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir

“You can’t cross the same river twice,’ the human Heraclitus says,” I muttered to myself. The dog Heraclitus says, “You can’t walk in Seattle twice.” It’s not possible. Seattle runs faster than a river and inevitably changes. Morise’s Seattle might no longer exist; there are millions of Seattles that take turns here. I feel this while I walk the amazing streets in the heart of the city or its outskirts. I sense its skin corroding and another skin growing, only to be shed and replaced again.”
― Mortada Gzar, I'm in Seattle, Where Are You? : A Memoir