Zana > Books: swana-authors‎ (41)

"I’d always seen religion as a rope, a tool to help us grow nearer to our own hearts, to our place in this universe. I did not understand those who would malign, without forgiveness or empathy, others who did not conform to a series of static rules—rules that were never meant to inspire competition, but to build us up, make us better. Such moral superiority was antithetical to the essence of divinity, to the point of faith. It was made clear, time and time again, that it was not our place to exercise harsh, human judgment over those whose hearts we did not know. It was made unequivocally clear in the Qur’an that there should be no compulsion in religion.

And yet.

We were all of us lost."

"No," he whispered back. "Destroy me."

"No," he whispered back. "Destroy me."

"She'd [Arthie] spun a business out of tea leaves because the Ettenians had found her tiny island of Ceylan and cultivated it to their liking. What lives the Ettenian soldiers in red uniforms hadn't stolen were claimed either by disease or deforestation that spawned landslides and floods in a country unprepared for such wrath, simply because they wanted to make room for crops like rubber and tea."

"They collected trophies for civilizing countries that had never asked for a redefinition of the word."

"How does one live in a world that turns away from such injustice for so long? Is this what it means to be Palestinian, Mother?"

"How does one live in a world that turns away from such injustice for so long? Is this what it means to be Palestinian, Mother?"

"I looked at my daughter and knew, as I know the sun will set and rise again, that I loved her with a longing and depth more profound than time, more profound than God."

"Not that the disguise of science fiction would be that drastic a costume change for Palestinian writers, especially those based in Palestine. Everyday life, for them, is a kind of dystopia. A West Bank Palestinian need only record their journey to work, or talk back to an IDF soldier at a checkpoint, or forget to carry their ID card, or simply look out their car window at the walls, weaponry, and barbed wire plastering the landscape, to know what a modern, totalitarian occupation is--something people in the West can only begin to understand through the language of dystopia" (Ghalayini 11).

"'Such a small country. A slender island in an ocean of hatred!'"

"'Residents of the camps in neighbouring countries are the core problem, however. They want to return to towns and villages that are no longer there. They dream of a world that no longer exists and cannot be restored, even if we agree to the idea, in principle. Even if they return, they will not find what they are looking for. But their stubbornness will not die--they pass it on to their children and grandchildren.'"

"My grandfather collected pictures of them clutching rusty keys to houses that no longer existed. But he wasn't mocking them, like others did. He felt a vague anxiety towards them, though he realised he was powerless to do anything about it. My grandfather feared those photographs of people holding keys more than any arms deal being signed by neighbouring countries."

'I kept hearing about you, reading about you. I heard that, as a child, you bought a gun and paid for it yourself. That you ripped up your diploma as soon as you received it from the head of the American University in Cairo, in front of all the important people. I remember what you said: “I have no need of a diploma from your school, a colonial and missionary institution. I have won it, but it has not won me.”'