Ar Ab Quotes

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

In Arabia - Arabia Desert - at the time of the prophet Muhammad, other prophets also preached: Maslama of the tribe of the Banu Hanifa in the Yamama, the very heart of Arabia; and Hanzala ibn Safwan; and Khalid ibn Sinan. Maslama's God was ar-Rahman, 'the Merciful'; today Muslims pray to Allah, ar-Rahman. Khalid ibn Sinan was sent to the tribe of 'Abs; for a time, he was followed, but then he was lost. Prophets are not always false simply because they are overtaken, and swallowed up, by history. Men of worth have always roamed the desert.

Londonas Rugsėjo 13 Londonas daug gra­žesnis ir jaukesnis, negu kad aš iki šiol buvau manęs: miestas su savo specifiniu kvapu bei charakeriu. Intymus, organizuotas iš vidaus, su minimumu išorinių nuostatų. Parkuose, kur susi­rinke londoniečiai šildosi saulėje, viešpatauja kažkokia kito pa­saulio rimtis, kaip Seurat paveiksle Baignade a Asniėres. Visi jaučiasi absoliučiai laisvai, bet tik sau ir su savim: galėtum eiti nuogas, ir niekas į tave nekreiptų nė mažiausio dėmesio. Oficialusis Londonas šiek tiek primena prieškarinį Ber­lyną, tik viskas čia šiek tiek mažesnės apimties, daugiau at ease. Visiems žinomi „landmarks“ - Parlamentas, Westminster Ab­bey, Buckingham Palace etc. - visiškai tokie, kokius juos ma­tai knygose ar atvirutėse: nei daugiau, nei mažiau. Iš Buckingham Palace man patiko tik mažas nuogas angeliukas su žuvim, pasodintas virš didžiulės rakto skylutės geležiniuose vartuose. Nepaprastai didelį įspūdį padarė National Gallery. Tai vie­nas iš patraukliausiai sutvarkytų mano matytų didžiųjų meno muziejų apskritai: erdvus, neperkrautas, privatus. Nuostabūs Manet, Renoirai (La Premiere sortie), Monet, Turner; Velaz­ quez (Roqueby Venus), Claude Lorrain, neskaitant Leonardo Uolų Madonos, Rafaelio Julijaus //, Tizianų, Gainsborough (ypač jo Watering place ir The Market cart).