CITY OF THE BEASTS Quotes

“The nahab are like the dead; their souls have escaped their breasts,” he said. “The nahab have no knowledge, they know nothing; they cannot spear a fish with a lance or fell a monkey with a dart, or climb a tree. They do not go dressed in air and light, as we do, but wear stinking cloth. They do not bathe in the river, they do not know the rules of decency or courtesy, they do not share their house, their food, their children, or their women. They have soft bones and their skulls split at the least blow. They kill animals and do not eat them, leaving them on the ground to rot. Wherever they pass they leave a trail of filth and poison, even in water. The nahab are so crazed that they try to take with them the stones of the earth, the sand of the rivers, and the trees of the forest. Some want the earth itself. We tell them that the jungle cannot be carried away on their backs like a dead tapir, but they do not listen. They speak to us of their gods but they do not want to hear of ours. Their appetites are unbounded, like the caimans’s. These terrible things I have seen with my own eyes, and I have heard with my own ears, and touched with my own hands.”
― Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts by Allende, Isabel [Perfection Learning, 2004] Hardcover [Hardcover]