48 Quotes by Susan Abulhawa

Thank you,’ I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in the eyes that find me pretty”; “May Allah never deny your prayer”; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere “thank you” an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful.” (169).

استغرب كيف تتحول الأشياء الضعيفة، حتى الكلمات إلى أشياء شريرة، من دون رحمة، من أجل بلوغ السلطة على الرغم من المنطق والتاريخ.

It's all about having a thread that links your years. To have another living person who just knows you. Someone who has seen you from childhood.

I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.

I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity...On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person who tried to jump and every body they pulled from the rubble. And I saw myself as I was never allowed to be, consoled, understood, and loved.

For us, fear comes where terror comes to others because we are anesthetized to the guns constantly pointed at us. And the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme. [...] Our sadness can make the stones weep. And the way we love is no exception.

Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.

Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell.

كنت أبدأ حياة جديدة. و لكن, مثل الندبة التي أتحسسها بيَدي, لا يزال الماضي يلازمني.