Frankenstein In Baghdad Quotes

Anyone who puts on a crown, even if only as an experiment, will end up looking for a kingdom.

Because I'm made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds - ethnicities, tribes, races and social classes - I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I'm the first true Iraqi citizen, he (the Whatsitsname) thinks.

Each of us has a measure of criminality.

We try to avoid meeting one another, although we are moving around in search of one another.

death gives the dead an aura of dignity, so they say, and makes the living feel guilty in a way that compels them to forgive those who are gone.

What can I say, Mr President? Do your job properly, and I won't tell stories about you.

I was not a murderer: I had merely plucked the fruit of death before it fell to the ground.

Why did he see other people dying on the news and yet he was still alive?

المواطن الأنموذجي الذي فشلت الدولة العراقية في إنتاجه منذ أيام فيصل الأول و حتى الإحتلال الأمريكي

The king ordered that the saint be placed in the olive press until his flesh was torn to pieces and he died. They then threw him out of the city, but the Lord Jesus gathered the pieces together and brought him back to life, and he went back into the city. —The Story of St. George, the Great Martyr

He believed that emotions changed memories, that when you lost the emotion associated with a particular event, you lost an important part of the event.

Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

الجميع مسؤولين بطريقة أو بأخرى عن هذا الحادث ... ان كل الحوادث الأمنية والمآسي التي نمر بها لها مصدر واحد هو الخوف. الناس البسطاء على الجسر ماتوا بسبب خوفهم من الموت. كل يوم نموت خوفا من الموت نفسه. المناطق التي آوت القاعدة وقدمت لها الدعم فعلت ذلك بسبب الخوف من المكون الاخر ، والمكون الاخر هذا جنّد نفسه وصنع ميليشيات لحماية نفسه من القاعدة. صنع آلة موت مضادة بسبب الخوف من الاخر. وسنشهد موتاً اكثر واكثر بسبب الخوف. على الحكومة وقوات الاحتلال ان تقضي على الخوف. تلقي القبض عليه ، اذا ارادوا حقاً ان ينتهي مسلسل الموت هذا. --- انها لا ترى الرب مثلما يراه الأب يوشيّا تمامًا. الرب ليس في الأعالي، لا تراه متسلطًا متجبرًا. إنه صديق قديم من الصعب التخلي عن صداقته. --- هكذا كان يريد الجميع تذكر الرجل، والموت، كما يرون، يُضفي وقاره على الميت، ويدفع الأحياء للشعور بذنب يستدعي الغفران للموتى. --- لا فائدة من العدالة لاحقاً، يجب أن تكون هنا أولاً، أما لاحقاً فسيكون الانتقام الرهيب؛ عذاب متصل من الرب العادل، عذاب لا نهاية له على الإطلاق، فهكذا يكون الانتقام. أما العدالة فيجب أن يحسم أمرها هنا على الأرض وتحت أنظار الشهود --- كل الذين يموتون يومياً يأخذون حذرهم في الغالب

They all dreamed something about Hasib. Parts of one dream made up for parts missing in another. A little dream filled a gap in a big one, and the threads stitched together to re-create a dream body for Hasib, to go with his soul, which was still hovering over all their heads and seeking the rest it could not find. Where was the body to which it should return in order to take its place among those who live in a state of limbo?

Isn't life a blend of things that are plausible and others that are hard to believe?

That's how everyone wanted to remember him; death gives the dead an aura of dignity, so they say, and makes the living feel guilty in a way that compels them to forgive those who are gone.

انت تتشبه بهم الان. تجرب ان تكون منهم، ومن يرتدي تاجاً، ولو على سبيل التجربة، سيبحث لاحقاً عن مملكة.

It's a temporary measure. We'll leave home till things calm down in the capital," he said. He didn't foresee the possibility that never coming back would become a very real option.

She didn't want to see her house disappear before her eyes but wanted to remember it as it had always been, tidy, clean and smelling of the people who had lived in it and passed through it.

There were serious things happening, and Hadi was merely a conduit, like a simple father or mother who produces a son who is a prophet, a savior, or an evil leader. They didn't exactly create the storm that followed. They were just the channel for something that was more powerful and significant than themselves.

Think how many stupid mothers and fathers have produced geniuses and great men in history. The credit isn't due to them but to circumstances and other things beyond their control. You're just an instrument, or a surgical glove that Fate put on its hand to move pawns on the chessboard of life.

There are laws that human beings are unaware of.

I'm the only justice there is in this country.

Death stalked the city like the plague.

Elishva found no comfort in abstract speculation. She treated her patron saint as one of her relatives, a member of a family that had been torn apart and dispersed. He was the only person she had left, apart from Nabu, the cat, and the specter of her son, Daniel, who was bound to return one day. To others she lived alone, but she believed she lived with three beings, or three ghosts, with so much power and presence that she didn't feel lonely.

Where had these two men come from? No one gave much thought to the question because the area had plenty of outsiders who had moved in on top of each other over many decades; no one could claim to be an original inhabitant.

It was a horrible job, one he had done without anyone's help, and somehow it didn't seem to make any sense despite all the arguments he used when trying to explain to his listeners.

Your wonderful stories saved you, my friend.

Not many people came back looking the same as when they left.

None of us should think only of ourselves.

If you were to write a story for the magazine, who would believe you?

Every day we're dying from the same fear of dying.

With his hand, which was made of primordial matter, he touched the pale, naked body and saw his spirit sink into it. His whole arm sank in, then his head and the rest of his body. Overwhelmed by a heaviness and torpor, he lodged inside the corpse, filling it from head to toe, because probably, he realized then, it didn’t have a soul, while he was a soul without a body.

If she asked Father Josiah, he would tell her to ask for forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun—she never would. If she asked God or Saint George the Martyr or the ghost of her son, they would tell her she didn’t need to ask forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun. She was fully entitled to seek revenge because it would strengthen her faith and give her ailing spirit the energy it needed to keep on living.

You who are listening to these recordings now, if you don’t have the courage to help me with my noble mission, then at least try not to stand in my way. —The Whatitsname