Forty Words for Love Quotes

“Blue!" The boy shrieked.
Yas followed the toddler's pointing finger. The ocean around them rippled with their movement. The water was not pink. Nor lavender. It did not glimmer. Pooling in swirls around her ankles were ribbons of aqua and teal. Threads of silver and gold.
"Raf?" she whispered. "You see it, don't you?"
"I... Y-yes, I do."
From the shoreline, Ernie stared with his jaw parted at the ripples of color. Not bothering to roll up his pajama bottoms, he walked into the water, the sea sloshing around his feet. Spirals of daffodil yellow puddled around his ankles.
"What... what is happening?" he whispered.
Others stepped into the water. They winced at the shards pricking at their feet.
The shards. Yas kneeled in the water. She pulled out a jagged, cracked shell fragment from the ocean floor and cradled it in her palm---the salt water dripping from it trailed rivulets of color down her hands, which glimmered beneath the still-dark sky.
"It's the shells." Yas leaned down and scooped out more. She raised her hand and opened her palm---the crowd gasped as gold and red trailed down her arm.
"The color is..." Oscar's voice trailed off. "It's leaking out of the broken shells?”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love

“I've asked you so many Golub words over the years." She looked up at him. Her eyes glistened. "But what's the Golub word for 'love'?"
"Love," he repeated. "Th-there's more than one word for love. There's friendship love---silan. Gratitude love---baya. Nostalgic love---ruman. There's... there are forty words for love."
"What if, hypothetically, you feel all those ways about someone?"
"Hypothetically?"
"No." She held his gaze. "Actually not hypothetically at all."
Looking into her eyes, Raf found himself unable to speak.
"I... I started working on that mural randomly. I didn't even plan it out properly. What did it matter? Not like anyone's given a crap about that mural since the storm came through. And what did I end up creating? The dolphins we swam with," she said. "The sandcastles we made together. Everything on there... Do you see it, Raf?"
There was Main Street---the movie theater. Tilted Tales, where they sat for hours on end reading comics. The entire street was there, but it was both of these locations that shone with a sheen of glitter. He took it all in.
"It's us," he said slowly. "You painted our places. Our favorite memories."
"I love you, Raf." Her voice quivered. "Silan---the friendship one. Baya, the gratitude one. Ruman. Nostalgia for what we were. All of it. I love you in all the ways I know.”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love

“Raf inhaled the scent of cardamom-infused chicken, pickled beef, eggplant, and steaming saffron rice simmering on the stove. They tried to approximate the spices in Moonlight Bay to their tastes of home, but it was difficult to replicate some--- like lak, which turned meals into savory and sweet, or min, which gave food an extra thickening.”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love

“The Golub tree, measuring two hundred feet tall, stood steps away. It was as wide as a redwood, with a thin layer of frost burrowed within its creases. Its plentiful dewdrop leaves created a crown the color of the inside of a cracked papaya, with the branches toward the bottom bare and icy. The limbs of the simple eastern pines surrounding it were coated with tendrils of orange frost.”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love

“Once upon a time, pink dolphins swam not far from shore. He and Yas would wade out to see the newest calves and swim alongside Mira and Hira--- the names they'd given the sweetest two with matching crooked fins.”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love

“Only shells collected from the sea could be crafted into necklaces to soothe anxious hearts. Every day, people crossed the threshold of their home. They settled into the nook of the guest room. They wept onto carefully curated shells, which would later be sanded and shaped into stars and worn as necklaces to soothe their suffering. There was an alchemy between the sea and the shells that her family had melded. Before her mother, the work had been her grandmother's. Before that, her grandmother's mother. Eight generations of Khanani women winding their way down to--- one day--- Yas.
She'd once eagerly painted each star before it left their home. Delicate birds. Flowers. Yas had loved the work. The art of catching and cutting and sanding and smoothing.”
― Aisha Saeed, Forty Words for Love