The White Mosque Quotes

“I would say our strength is that we can’t get everyone on the same page.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“After the end of a world, the fall of a city, the ruin of a distinct way of life, there is ethnic background. After faith dwindles, there is music. There is, in winter, the ritual of the lighted tree.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“Thirst can make you superstitious: thirst for meaning, for perfect understanding, for knowing when to stop.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“Paradox of martyrdom: that those linked to this history by birth, but now living in comfort, feel as if the story is theirs, while others continue to live it.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“If there is a tradition of peacemaking in the Somali territories, and if Mennonites have managed to connect with these ideas, if they have such respect for Islam and Somali structures of social healing, then why did anyone, ever, have to be converted, why did even one have to be subjected to that alienation and danger?”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“Taken together, predictions of the end times add up to a vast cry, less like prophecy than recognition: the world is ending every day.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“They share your passion for the poignant gleam of the unforeseen, the way a new experience can shake the heart. But they don’t, they can’t share your hope that the men of color will never change, that the women of color will go on picking cotton in the valley between Samarkand and Bukhara, laughing as you photograph them, their faded gowns held above the knees, full to bursting with great balls of snow. My father and uncle don’t share your wish that the people of color maintain, for the benefit of the white moderns, a reservoir of timeless, elemental life. How could they?”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“Anyone who is waiting for a critical mass of people of color to transform a white space will wait until Judgment Day. . . . Identity is not a question of numbers. It’s a question of storytelling.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque