Black Butterflies Quotes

“His absence is like a dull ache in her bones. What she wants right now, more than anything, is to have a hot bath and a stiff whisky, while he rubs her shoulders, and then sits on the closed toilet lid, an ashtray on his lap, keeping her company as she soaks.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Yet each morning on waking up, she knows she would not exchange these weeks alone for anything. Tending to her own needs for a while is a form of bliss.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“It's like a chink opening in the ceiling of her prison cell. Almost painful, the brightness of the hope that streams in.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“It feels as if everyone’s life is on hold while they wait for the madness to abate.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Her husband, the sole other passenger, keeps his eyes closed and grips the handrail. His head droops, long spine curving. She could hardly stir him from bed. It’s the weekend and she’d hoped to spend her day in the studio, but the terse five a.m. phone call put a stop to that.
‘There’s been a break-in,’ her mother’s neighbour informed her. ‘Criminals, hooligans, God knows what. Dancing and drinking all night. Whooping and shouting. The police don’t want to know.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Only the present exists. Today and today and today.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Sarajevo Red. That’s what people call that colour now, as if it were the name of an oil paint.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“She’s never known such spaciousness of time. At the dark heart of the year, a flower of light has opened up.
They share a glass of water and agree it tastes exquisite. Better than champagne.
‘Ah, this is the happiest I’ve ever been,’ Zora says.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“We’re all refugees now, Zora writes to Franjo. We spend our days waiting for water, for bread, for humanitarian handouts: beggars in our own city.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Another settles on her arm and she fancies she glimpses the loops and dots of Arabic script before they dissolve into the sweat on her skin.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Oh Mirsad,’ Zora says. ‘Let me past. Please.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘My studio.’
‘I’ve just been there,’ he says. ‘There were lots of us, saving books. We formed a chain and passed the burning books back, trying to save as many as we could.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“The ground shakes and a cloud of black smoke spills over the rooftops. Somewhere beyond the ring of mountains, other people – normal people, living in freedom – are swimming in the sea and hiking in the mountains. They’re eating bowls of cereal with ice-cold milk while watching breakfast TV.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“And still there is not enough of anything. Parks and playgrounds have been dug up and planted with vegetables. Chard, peas, beans and marrow sprout from balconies all over Sarajevo and nettles and dandelions are plucked from the roadside to make salads and soups.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“And although she’d tried to explain, her mother hadn’t understood at all. And the more Zora had talked, the more she realised she had no idea why this war was happening either.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its scents and sounds – the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafés, the mahalas – the old neighbourhoods – that radiate out from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“On her way to work the next morning, she is certain this will be one of her last days in Sarajevo. Looking around, she sees how the normal rhythm of the city has been broken and is amazed she didn’t make up her mind to leave before now. Bosnian Serb snipers lie behind sandbags on the tops of buildings and take aim at people in the streets below as if they are sparrows. Sarajevans - old, young, men, women, Muslim, Croat, Serb - dart across the roads in zigzags in an attempt to dodge the bullets. On the tram, passengers duck their heads in a wave when they pass in front of the Jewish Cemetery, where a snipers’ nest is known to be located.
Disembarking, a series of blasts sound nearby and she freezes on the tram steps. The man behind pushes her off. They run to take cover in the stone-arched entrance of a locked-up carpet shop. Perhaps a dozen people press up against each other, coffee breath, perfume and the smell of their sweat intermingling. Each explosion sends a collective tremor through them. When they pull apart some twenty minutes later, they don’t look at each other. They brush down their clothes, straighten their shoulders and move off quickly.
Zora stares after them, in shock. It’s a quarter to ten on a Tuesday morning. She can’t live like this.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“And now, a little more sober, her longing for him is more intense than she has felt in years, like when they were first lovers, before they had Dubravka. Back when she felt that the world would fall apart if she wasn’t with him, that she didn’t have a centre without him, and that only he could understand her.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Mirsad runs his hand through his thick brown hair and leans back against the mirror, a leather briefcase, no doubt full of books, at his feet. He’s a good-looking man: tall and broad-shouldered with mild blue eyes. A bookstore owner and a close friend of Franjo’s, even though he’s much younger, somewhere in his mid-forties. The two can spend hours chatting together about politics and literature in Mirsad’s shop, sipping small cups of coffee.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies

“Of course, it would be a relief to step out of the nightmarish streets of Sarajevo and into the calm of her daughter’s Wiltshire village, but every instinct tells her to stay put. And it isn’t just the risk of redundancy and of their homes being taken that makes her want to remain. She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its
scents and sounds - the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafes, the mahalas - the old neighbourhoods - that radiate out from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell. In her twenties, when she returned home from her six years in Paris and Belgrade, she realised she couldn’t live anywhere else. And now, she wants to stay in the city she loves as it’s shaken, to see things through.”
― Priscilla Morris, Black Butterflies