Celestial Bodies Jokha Alharthi Quotes

The feet walk fast for the loving heart’s sake, but when you feel no longing, your feet drag and ache

Aah, the books! The thought of the enormous pleasure of books quickened Asma’s pace. It was a good moment to lose herself in their joys.

about spirits or souls that were perfectly round once upon a time but had been split apart. For as long as they were separated they would search out their other half until they found it. That is how she imagined love:

What we live and what lives inside us.

تنفّست الصعداء، و توقف قلبها عن الغفران.

Laughter looks so disgusting sometimes.

The beloved’s face gives you more beauty, the more you give it gaze.

She received the news of his death in silent submission. She arranged the funeral rites as well as she could in her modest circumstances, for his uncle refused to offer the slightest help or to mourn. She died, though no one knew she was dead. Every day and every night, for ten years, she died a little more. She breathed and ate and drank but she was dead. She spoke to people and walked among them, dead. Only much later did her body give up its already-deceased spirit, its dead spirit, no longer forced to pretend, to play at being alive.

I could not believe how much pain was crackling through the air, generated simply by Mayya's being there. Haloes of light embraced that presence. If I were to just put my hand out, I felt, I could touch those matchless haloes ever so gently.

I went to my father’s funeral after he died in hospital. When my uncle died of a heart attack, and Zayd drowned in the flood, and Maneen was killed by a bullet, and Hafiza died of AIDS and Marwan killed himself with his father’s dagger, I went to their funerals, and I also attended funerals for my friends’ fathers and mothers, but I didn’t go to Zarifa’s. Simply, no one told me.

God, Mighty is He, created every soul in the shape of a ball. And then He split every one of these spheres into two, and apportioned to each and every human body one half. It is decreed that each body will meet the body that holds the other half of that rent soul. Between the two a passion arises from that ancient bond. From one human being to the next, the effect of this union will vary, according to the delicacy of each person’s nature.

In the name of God, the One who is merciful and compassionate. May blindness strike the eye of the envious one! Ma sha’ allah, it’s God’s will, this is right! The first one’s a girl, and a girl comes to raise her little brothers. Ten boys will follow her, God willing. Bismillahi . . . allahuma salli ala n-nabi. Prayers be on the blessed Prophet!

Como nos sentimos livres, quando já não nos limitamos a ser uma extensão ou uma personificação da fantasia de outra pessoa, mesmo que essa pessoa seja o nosso pai.

Suwayd’s

Some of those who fancy themselves philosophers claim that God, Mighty is He, created every soul in the shape of a ball. And then He split every one of these spheres into two, and apportioned to each and every human body one half. It is decreed that each body will meet the body that holds the other half of that rent soul. Between the two a passion arises from that ancient bond. From one human being to the next, the effect of this union will vary, according to the delicacy of each person’s nature.

The clouds fold up. Suddenly through the small airplane window the sky is clear. Abdallah, son of Merchant Sulayman, dozes off for a few moments. As he wakes up he is still half-talking in his sleep. Don’t hang me upside down in the well, don’t. Please, no! Don’t!

For some reason he hadn’t stayed in his room as he usually did after the evening prayers. Having assumed that he’d sought the refuge of his bed as he did every night, I went out and Zarifa locked the door behind me. We both knew she would unlock it before going to sleep.

Though I hold her close, my soul still yearns yet how can I be closer than in her embrace? I kiss her mouth to chase my fever away but my mad cast-off love-thirst burns ever more The reach of my passion! May that craving be cured by the sweetness of that which my lips do absorb My exposed weathered heart will never heal itself until these two selves are seen as one mingled

Mingling with his Bedouin friends, he could keep that heavy cloud from settling over his heart, from convincing him that stories and laughter were nothing but the banal and trivial games of this fleeting lower world, this den of sorrows. When he was with them, amidst the singing, the memory of his two dead sons no longer caught in his throat like a lump and he didn’t feel so weighted down by the world that all he wanted was to vanish and leave its false pretenses behind. When he was with them, the notion that one could feel some joy at the pleasures of this world no longer churned up pangs of guilt from deep inside him. He could enjoy himself without the lurking worry that it was all a chimera he must avoid; he needed to be as alert to its dangers as he was on guard against the most vicious of traps.

Majnun had said to his Layla. Light the dimness with your glow once the full moon dips and shine in the sun’s stead whilst lazy dawn tarries Your radiance outdoes the brightest sun there be: it can never thieve your smile, steal your pearly mouth The resplendent night, your countenance! tho’ the full moon rise a moon bereft of your breast, of this graceful throat I see Whence would the morning sun ever find a ready kohl-stick to etch for its pale face these languid eyes of yours? What starry siren can mime coy Layla when her form spirals away or her eyes, the winsome startled pools of the sands’ wild mare?

Não tinhas a mínima noção do que é o amor, Mayya? Não sentiste nada do que eu passei enquanto andava à volta da tua casa como um peregrino em volta da Caaba, uma, duas, sete vezes? Como pôde a casa ter espaço suficiente para abrigar toda a minha paixão? Como é que a sua única varanda aguentou comigo, ali parado, sozinho, sob o peso de tanto amor, sem se partir ou cair na rua de terra batida, para ser levada pela brisa para os céus de Deus? Como é que aquele quartinho suportou as toneladas de nuvens que eu aí guardava, só para poder caminhar sobre elas? Como é que as paredes se mantiveram imóveis e inabaláveis, sem tremer uma única vez com o tormento da minha insustentável felicidade? Mas tudo ficou no seu lugar, apesar de eu não ter lugar. As portas não saíram dos seus gonzos, apesar de o meu corpo abatido estar crivado pelas balas vivas do amor desesperado. As janelas não se partiram, ainda que as minhas asas batessem violentamente contra o vidro, com força suficiente para voar da janela da frente até à mancha mais distante no horizonte. A casa foi suficientemente grande para me conter, para sufocar o grito de desejo que ecoava dentro de mim. Como foi então possível, Mayya, que os teus olhos, fixos na tua máquina de costura, nunca conseguissem ver a dimensão imensa e tortuosa do meu amor, e o meu eu aprisionado?

Did she want Asma to know the value of the freedom that marriage would give her? She’d be one of the women now, and finally she would have the right to come and go, to mix freely with the older women and listen to their talk, to attend weddings, all of them, near and far, and funerals too. Now she would be one of the women who sat around their coffee in the late mornings and then again at the end of the day. She would be invited to lunch and dinner, and she would issue her own invitations, since she was no longer merely a girl. Marriage was her identity document, her passport to a world wider than home.

. . . But what are you really thinking and feeling, my hostess of the air, as you spend all your waking days suspended between sky and earth?