Zia's Quotes

Now the tattoos," Zia announced. "Brilliant!" I said. "On your tongue," she added. "Excuse me?

I woke to a bucket of ice water in my face. “Sadie! Get up,” Zia said. “God!” I yelled. “Was that necessary?” “No,” admitted Zia.

Tell you what," I said. "After the testing after the Demon Days, when things settle down -" "Things won't settle down." "- I'm going to take you to the mall." She blinked. "The mall? For what reason?" "To hang out," I said. "We'll get some hamburgers. See a movie." Zia hesitated. "Is this what you'd call a 'date'?" My expression must have been priceless, because Zia actually cracked a smile. "You look like a cow hit with a shovel.

Carter, not to be unkind," I said, "but the last few months you've been seeing messages about Zia everywhere. Two weeks ago, you thought she was sending you a distress call in your mashed potatoes." "It was a Z! Carved right in the potatoes!

The Temple of Dendur," Zia said. "Actually it was built by the Romans - " "When they occupied Egypt," Carter said, like this was delightful information. "Augustus commissioned it." "Yes," Zia said. "Fascinating," I murmured. "Would you two like to be left alone with a history textbook?

Egypt is the First Nome. New York is the twenty-first. What’s the last one, the Three-hundred-and-sixtieth?” “That would be Antarctica,” Zia said. “A punishment assignment. Nothing there but a couple of cold magicians and some magic penguins.” “Magic penguins?” “Don’t ask.

How does it taste?” Carter wondered. Zia smiled. “Stick out your tongue.” To answer Carter’s question, the tattoo tasted like burning car tires. “Ugh.” I spit a blue gob of “order and harmony” into the fountain.

Oh, god,” I said. “Sorry, sorry. Do I die now?” --Sadie to Zia

Then there were the shabti, magical figurines that were supposed to come to life when summoned. A few months ago, I’d fallen for a girl named Zia Rashid, who’d turned out to be a shabti. Falling in love for the first time had been hard enough. But when the girl you like turns out to be ceramic and cracks to pieces before your eyes—well, it gives “breaking your heart” a new meaning.

I'll let you and Zia have some quality time," she told me. "Just the two of you and your coat.

Somewhere behind me, Zia yelled, "Hippo!" Which I thought was a little late. ~Carter Kane

Another guy barked orders to a small army of brooms, mops, and buckets that were scuttling around, cleaning up the city. "Like that cartoon," Sadie said. "Where Mickey Mouse tries to do magic and the brooms keep splitting and toting water." "'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,'" Zia said. "You do know that was based on an Egyptian story, don't you?

It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

My name is Zia Rashid.” She tilted her head as if listening. Right on cue, the entire building rumbled. Dust sprinkled from the ceiling, and the slithering sounds of scorpion doubled in volume behind us. “And right now,” Zia continued, sounding a bit disappointed, “I must save your miserable lives.

Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?" Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames - a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room. "I am a scribe in the House of Life, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods.

What about King Tut’s tomb?” I protested. “That boy king?” Zia rolled her eyes. “Boring. You should see some of the good tombs.

Zia turned toward us, her expression grim. “I will show you to your quarters. In the morning, your testing begins. We will see what magic you know, and how you know it.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I exchanged an uneasy look with Sadie. “Sounds fun,” Sadie ventured. “And it we fail this test?” Zia regarded her coldly. “This is not the sort of test you fail, Sadie Kane. You pass or you die.

Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.

The generals who had called Zia a mullah behind his back felt ashamed at having underestimated him: not only was he a mullah, he was a mullah whose understanding of religion didn't go beyond parroting what he had heard from the next mullah. A mullah without a beard, a mullah in a four-star general's uniform, a mullah with the instincts of a corrupt tax inspector.

That’s right, Sadie. For our first real date, I picked up Zia in a boat pulled by a deranged griffin. So what? Like your dates aren’t weird?

Her eyes were luminous gold. I wondered if that was the last color a bug saw when it was trapped in amber—and if the bug thought, wow, that's beautiful, right before it was frozen forever.

The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed." By looking into yourself," Zia said. "Even if you have to look into a mirror that's outside yourself to do it." "And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just someone else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so you can see yourself in it.

With Zia's controversial demise in 1988, Jinnah was finally spared the false beard Zia kept pinning on the founder's otherwise clean-shaven face.

Not long," Zia said. "I wanted to talk to you before [Carter and Amos] come back." [Sadie] raised an eyebrow. "About Carter? Well, if you're wondering whether he likes you, the way he stammers might be an indication." Zia frowned. "No, I'm—" "Asking if I mind? Very considerate. I must say at first I had my doubts, what with you threatening to kill us and all, but I've decided you're not the bad sort, and Carter's mad about you, so—" "It's not about Carter." "Oops. Could you just forget what I said, then?

Somewhere behind me, Zia yelled, "Hippo!" Which I thought was a little late. She stumbled toward me over the rocking deck, the tip of her staff on fire. Our ghostly pal Setne floated behind her, grinning with delight. "There is it!" Setne shook his diamond pink rings. "Told ya Apophis would send a monster to kill you." "You're so smart!" I shouted. "Now, how do we stop it?

The people have realized that Martial Law is not law. A regime not established by law is devoid of the attribute to dispense law. A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law.

An exile, said Zafar, is a refugee with a library.

Zia looked appalled. “Setne? As in the Setne? Does Carter realize—?” “Yep.” “And Thoth suggested this?” “Yep.” “And you’re actually going along with it?” “Yep.

Hapi?" I asked. "Why, yes, I am happy!" Hapi beamed. "I'm always happy because I'm Hapi! Are you happy?" Zia frowned up at the giant. "Does he have to be so big?" The god laughed. Immediately he shrank down to human size, though the crazy cheerful look on his face was still pretty unnerving. "Oh, Setne!" Hapi chuckled and pushed the ghost playfully. "I hate this guy. Absolutely despise him!" Hapi's smile became painfully wide. "I'd love to rip off your arms and legs, Setne. That would be amazing!" Setne ... drifted a little farther away from the smiling god. "Oh!" Hapi clapped excitedly. "The world is going to end tomorrow. I forgot!" "You'd never get to Memphis without my help. You'd get torn into a million pieces!" He seemed genuinely pleased to share that news.

Listening is hard, as my friend once said, because you run the risk of having to change the way you see the world.

Yes, I’d still have Sonia. And Zia. And so many other things that Karim no longer had. I’d still have the Arabian Sea and Sindhri mangoes, and crabbing with Captain Saleem, who had the most popular boat of all because his business card promoted ‘Garunteed no cockroach’, and, yes, there’s still be those bottles of creamy, flavored milk from Rahat Milk Corner and drives to the airport for coffee and warm sand at the beach and Thai soup at Yuan Tung; yes, Burns Road nihari; yes, student biryani; oh, yes, yes, yes, and all that, and all that again. So why complain? Why contemplate words like ‘longing’?

Is that not the Promethean fable, that the fire stolen from the gods will light men their way even while it burns their hands?

Our memories do not visit us in chronology, and the story we form by joining up the memories involves choices with the purpose of making a whole and finding a pattern.

A regime that can suspend or abrogate the constitution and run the country on its whims and caprice should be ashamed of bringing on its lips the word "law". It is like prescribing a punishment for adultery after raping the country. It is like saying that Holy Quran is suspended nobody can escape from the Hadees.

How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what they’ve seen on the American movie screen?

Zia was also cold and detached; imagine Ayn Rand, though a painter instead of a writer.

Come on. Let's go up to the kitchen, make some tea. We can try another one of Zia's cupcakes. She made some with chocolate frosting." Lily froze in her tracks. "I hate it," she burst out. "I'm here, sipping tea and nibbling cupcakes while Bruno's out there? What, should I maybe crochet a white lace doily while I'm at it?" Tam and Edie exchanged glances. Tam, spoke, her voice dry. "Shot of bourbon, then?

I am as impressed by honesty as anyone, but when there is a hint that a man is taking me into his confidence, my first instinct is to suspect him. Am I to be flattered? And is he about to break another’s confidence?

Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience.

He, like so many of them, came from that breed of international development experts unsparing in its love for all humanity but having no interest in people.

if a colonizer replaces language, clothes and names of a nation then what remains is a mere shadow of the colonizer.

The economy recovered to a great extent from the disasters of Bhutto’s rule, but the boom of the 1980s under Zia proved as shallow as that under Musharraf – based above all on US aid and remittances from the Pakistani workers who flooded to the Gulf states in response to the oil boom.

Maps, contour maps and all maps, intrigue us for the metaphors that they are: tools to give us a sense of something whose truth is far richer but without which we would perceive nothing and never find our bearings.

To go from America’s founding belief that it can form an ever more perfect union to a belief that it can reconstruct another country in the image of its hopes for itself – to cover that distance – does not take long.

I had a friend at Princeton, a Russian graduate student. He had a cute message on his answering machine, delivered in his thick Russian accent: Who are you and what do you want? Some people spend a lifetime trying to answer these questions. You, however, have thirty seconds. My father and I chuckled. What happened to him? Gone. My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you’re made of, and what you want. In life, as in our new version of the game, you start off not knowing the answer. It’s only when the particles rub against each other that we figure out their properties.

My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you’re made of, and what you want. In life, as in our new version of the game, you start off not knowing the answer. It’s only when the particles rub against each other that we figure out their properties. It’s the strangest thing, this idea in quantum physics, and yet somehow unsurprising when you consider it as a metaphor. It’s when the thing interacts that its properties are revealed, even resolved.

I'm an excellent pastry chef. My pie crust is better than my Zia Rosa's. Come on back to the kitchen. I'll make a chocolate cream pie before your very eyes. I'll feed a piece of it to you by hand. And by the time I'm done, you're not going to be asking me if I'm gay anymore." She cleared her throat, gaze darting down. "Is that so." "It is," he said. "On your feet. Come on back to the kitchen. I mean it. I'm dead serious. It's pie time. And I am so ready for you.

that the truth is finer and that the only answers each of us hears are to the questions we are capable of asking.

Advisers were numberless in Kabul, like stray dogs in Mumbai.

We are a dangerous breed, you and I. We are lock pickers. We are dangerous to others and ourselves. It is always a great risk to open a door if you don’t know what’s behind it.

Every man, he said, carries his own pyre.

What is the beginning of rage, the beginning of anger? Not dislike, but love.

La dignità si deve mantenere, sempre, ma l'orgoglio porta male.

Het leven kan alleen achteraf worden begrepen; het vervelende is dat het voorwaarts moet worden geleefd.

as a safety valve to preserve Indian democracy, the basic structure doctrine in Kesavananda should live on.

General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s.

So,” said Zia, “you’re gonna eat your way through the whole universe, top to bottom. And then what?

Shigri boy lost his marbles in the end but the plane General Zia is about to board has enough VX gas on it to wipe out a village.

The sanction of force stands behind the medley of personal orders and regulations of Martial Law. The sanction of the people's consent stands behind the hierarchy of laws. In one situation, the population is regimented into acquiescence. In the other, the population voluntarily establishes a contract with Parliament. For this reason, one is called a regime and the other, a government. Martial law rests on the sanction of force and not on the sanction of law.

Dandogli le spalle apro il rubinetto ed aspetto si riempia l’acquaio per lavarli. Thomas mi raggiunge senza fare alcun rumore. Me ne accorgo solo quando poggia contemporaneamente le mani sui bordi del ripiano, bloccandomi tra le sue braccia. Quel contatto improvviso mi fa trasalire ed uno dei due piatti che reggo mi scivola di mano, sprofondando nella schiuma. «Ok, facciamo così» mi sussurra ad un orecchio, avvicinandosi al mio viso. «Oggi è il tuo giorno fortunato: voglio essere comprensivo. Fingerò di non aver rischiato di rompermi l’osso del collo cadendo in una buca di più di due metri. Sorvolerò sulla storia della macchina e dimenticherò di aver trascorso un’ora cercando di convincere mia zia che non sono il crudele maschilista insensibile che crede. Tu, d’altro canto, verrai con me nello studio, ti siederai e ti impegnerai a trovare un accordo ragionevole. Considera che mi sento particolarmente generoso, cosa che capita di rado».

The whole thing is too abstract, continued Zafar, this business of our lives standing for something else. All we know is that we don’t want it to stand for nothing. So we dive headlong into becoming heroes, becoming the big swinging dick on Wall Street or the rock star or the hot-shot human rights lawyer. Which is about making our lives stand for something that our intelligence can grasp, saving us from confronting what we fear might be true—or what we would fear if we gave ourselves the chance—namely, that we’re accidental pieces of flesh, mutton without meaning.

Strada facendo, zio Vernon si lamentava con zia Petunia. A lui piaceva lamentarsi di tutto: i colleghi di lavoro, Harry, il consiglio, Harry, la banca, Harry, erano solo alcuni dei suoi argomenti preferiti.

Ah, che città, diceva a mia figlia zia Lina, che città splendida e significativa: qua si sono parlate tutte le lingue, Emma, qua s'è costruito di tutto e s'è scassato di tutto, qua la gente non si fida di nessuna chiacchiera ed è assai chiacchierona, qua c'è il Vesuvio che ti ricorda ogni giorno che la più grande impresa degli uomini potenti, l'opera più splendida, il fuoco, e il terremoto, e la cenere e il mare in pochi secondi te la riducono a niente.

But that delusional urge is only one of the varieties of self-deception that encourage us to believe we know another human being and, for that matter, ourselves. This faith in having the measure of others really becomes unstuck when you begin to consider how many you’d acknowledge as having the measure of you. That number dwindles before your eyes.

YOU’RE FORGETTING SOMETHING, Horus told me. A little busy here! I thought back. You might think it’s easy steering a magic boat through the sky. You’d be wrong. I didn’t have Amos’s animated coat, so I stood in the back trying to shift the tiller myself, which was like stirring cement. I couldn’t see where we were going. We kept tilting back and forth while Sadie tried her best to keep an unconscious Zia from flopping over the side. It’s my birthday, Horus insisted. Wish me happy birthday! “Happy birthday!” I yelled. “Now, shut up!

People will tell you that the world is divided into good and bad, and that I’m bad, but it’s not, and I’m not. The real truth is that I make choices based on my circumstances. We all do. It trumps everything else, whether you know it or not. There has never been a good or bad.

Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it.

Afghanistan doesn’t have the oil of the Khazars, he said, and we’re not ready to prostitute our women like the Thais. Unlike the Westerner’s, ours is not a spiritual poverty but a material one. When our needs in that area are met, we will not have the dilemma or crisis of Western man.

In the peaceful moments of night, Whenever i remember you..! At that moment, Me beg to Allah Almighty For your eternal happiness..! I pray to Him, All griefs, all tears and all sorrows, In your fate, Shift to mine..! And, All possible joys of mine, Shift to yours..! O Aysel Stay blessed and happy..!

love America for the clear idea behind the cloudy reality. Without the idea, the joys of America would be mere accident, the ephemera tossed up by the hand of fate, to disappear in the wind. And what is that idea? It is the idea of hope, that grand, audacious idea that makes the Britisher blush with embarrassment.

Under Zia’s regime life for women in Pakistan became much more restricted. Jinnah said, “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.” But General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn’t produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime.

A te - si era arrabbiata - tuo padre t'ha privato di una famiglia grande, di tutti quanti noi, nonni, zii, cugini, che non siamo intelligenti ed educati come lui; ci ha tagliati via con l'accetta, t'ha fatta crescere isolata, per paura che ti guastassimo. Sprizzava astio e tuttavia quelle parole adesso mi davano sollievo, me le ripetei nella testa. Affermavano l'esistenza di un legame forte e positivo, lo pretendevano. Mia zia non aveva detto: tu hai la mia faccia o almeno un po' mi assomigli; mia zia aveva detto: tu non sei solo di tuo padre e tua madre, tu sei anche mia, tu sei di tutta la famiglia da cui lui è venuto fuori, e chi sta dalla parte nostra non è mai solo, si carica di forza.

We’re not put on this earth to fuck around. We have to make something of our lives.

No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.

It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fool’s errand.

Our choices are made, our will flexed, in the teeth of events that overwhelm us and devour us.

It’s always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don’t you think?

You think people never say what they mean. The truth is, nine times out of ten what they say is all they mean.

Knowledge is life with wings but imagination is the soul of those wings..!

My soul will finds yours..!

Relation between you and me is just like as between "Breath and Life" you are my life i am your breath, cant live without each other...!

Afghanistan’s barren, ragged desolation moaned a long dirge of ancient wonder, the earth’s broken features ready to receive fallen horsemen, the lost traveller, and all the butchered tribes.

They spent the day with Lucia, who promised that the following day she would take them up to Scala, an even tinier, loftier town where her parents now lived. That evening, Mac took her to a restaurant called Il Flauto di Pan- Pan's Flute- perched at the Villa Cimbrone among the gardens and crumbling walls. It was probably the most beautiful restaurant she'd ever seen. The centuries-old villa was embellished with incredible gardens of fuchsia bougainvillea, lemon and cypress trees and flowering herbs that scented the air. Their veranda table had an impossibly gorgeous view of the sea.

somewhere there is someone, who dreams of... your smile, your fragrance, your long black hairs, your magical eyes, and finds your presence...! those moments of life are worthwhile, sweet and priceless and in those moments he lives his whole life...! O AYSEL listen, at any stage, any turn and any turn of life, when you feel Loneliness, remember that its true, somebody somewhere is, thinking of "YOU"...!

Mathematics, which doesn’t include the tawdry efforts of statistics or probability, pure mathematics, the product of the human mind turning to face itself, turning into itself, and finding in the realm of necessary consequences, where no contingent fact is to be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or touched – it discloses a beauty that exhausts human comprehension and a certainty the senses can never touch.

Pointing to the sandstone buildings around us, some of which had stood there for several hundreds of years, she commented on how old everything in Oxford looked. Can’t they afford anything new? she asked earnestly.

In Bilaath, I said. Bilaath, or Vilayet as it has otherwise been transcribed into English, derives from Persian and Ottoman Turkish, in which the word meant governorate or district. In Bengali, the word is used to refer to Britain. In fact, one English colloquial name for Britain, Blighty, somewhat archaic these days and mainly reserved for comedy, is derived from the word Bilaath, which was current in India in the time of the British Raj.

Her Deep Sea Eyes…！ Where i Love to Die 。。。 She…. Is like a lite ray, From the skies..! Looks like a fairy, From the paradise..! When she moves her feet, Moon walks side by side..! Flower blossoms, On her pink smiles..! Evening falls, When she closes her eyes..! Her awakening, Makes the sun rise..!!! Her scent full breaths, Make the fragrance live..! Her deep sea eyes, Where i love to die..! She...! Is like a lite ray, From the skies..! Looks like a fairy, From the paradise..! 。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

In the peaceful moments of night, Whenever i remember you..! At that moment, Me beg to Allah Almighty For your eternal happiness..! I pray to Him, All griefs, all tears and all sorrows, In your fate, Shifts to mine..! And, All possible joys of mine, Shifts to yours..! O Aysel..! Stay blessed and happy..!

For a long time I felt, which is to say I consciously thought, that our difficulties were of my doing, my fault, that I had brought upon my parents some grief to warrant their treatment of me – to warrant the violence. I know now, of course, that self-blame is rather common among children in such circumstances as mine.

Love is a sickness, A strange connection, It’s a big hobby, o sweet heart..! Listened many stories, From elders and wise persons, But never believe, Never thought, Those stories are considerable, Sitting on the throne of myself, Never came to know...! Above that throne, at too much height, Somewhere In the crowd of fairies, In the Anklet of your feet, In the Shadow of your tresses, in your small village, Sun, moon and all stars dance crazily..! I never came to know all this, o sweetheart, On the sound of your walking feet, on your pink smile, On the movement of your eyebrows, on your lovely voice, on your killing eyes, All flowers of garden care well, for a very little moment of closeness with you sacrifice their life, I never came to know all this, o sweetheart…! Moonlit after touching your body propagate everywhere, Roses get the fragrance from your sweating, in the form of due drops, I never came to know all this, o sweetheart…! I was very confident, never face this, Wise heart, will never be crazy, but, Then it happened, sweetheart..! Felt very sad, sweet heart..! Heart converted in to blood and started flowing, o sweet heart..! Convinced too by the movement of your eyebrow, Came for donation, became a recipient, o sweet heart..! Convinced by the sayings of elders, That, Love is a sickness, a strange connection between souls It’s a incurable addiction, o sweet heart..!

As I reached the highest step, I turned. Spread along the platform was a mass of bobbing black hair like a long wave of silk. Suddenly I felt the first stirrings of what I would later come to recognize as kinship, a feeling that alarmed me, a sense that I was of a piece with a group of people for the most basic reasons, simple to the senses and irrational.

At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape itself. When I listen to my memories now, I believe that all they tell me are the stories about themselves.

La vita è come una treccia, ogni ciocca è importante e ha un significato. La prima è quella del dovere, che abbiamo tutti e che significa obbedienza; la seconda è quella della roba – chi l'ha deve stare attento a non farsela arrubbare e chi non l'ha ha soltanto la fame nelle budella e la vulissi assai – e la terza è quella dell'amore. E se una ha tutte e tre le ciocche belle forti, la treccia è bellissima e vive felice. Ma assai fimmine hanno la prima ciocca bella folta, mentre le altre due sono sottili. Se riescono a intrecciarsi la treccia bella non è, ma tiene, e la vita continua. Se invece la ciocca dell'amore addiventa troppo forte e quella del dovere è debole, la treccia non regge e si disfa: tre devono essere le ciocche, così è

I love America for an idea. The reality is important but ambiguous. In Senegal, there stands a building where slaves were stored before they were sent on to the New World. It was built in the same year as the American Declaration of Independence. I love America for the clear idea behind the cloudy reality. Without the idea, the joys of America would be mere accident, the ephemera tossed up by the hand of fate, to disappear in the wind. And what is that idea? It is the idea of hope, that grand, audacious idea that makes the Britisher blush with embarrassment. It may be an idea not everyone cares for, but it is one I need, I want. I love her for her thought, first, of where you’re going, not where you’re from; for her majestic optimism against the gray resistances of Europe, most pure in Britain, so that in America I feel like—I am—a sexual being.

Two things that weren’t even on the agenda survived every upheaval that followed. General Akhtar remained a general until the time he died, and all God’s names were slowly deleted from the national memory as if a wind had swept the land and blown them away. Innocuous, intimate names: Persian Khuda which had always been handy for ghazal poets as it rhymed with most of the operative verbs; Rab, which poor people invoked in their hour of distress; Maula, which Sufis shouted in their hashish sessions. Allah had given Himself ninety-nine names. His people had improvised many more. But all these names slowly started to disappear: from official stationery, from Friday sermons, from newspaper editorials, from mothers’ prayers, from greeting cards, from official memos, from the lips of television quiz-show hosts, from children’s storybooks, from lovers’ songs, from court orders, from telephone operators’ greetings, from habeas corpus applications, from inter-school debating competitions, from road inauguration speeches, from memorial services, from cricket players’ curses; even from beggars’ begging pleas. In the name of God, God was exiled from the land and replaced by the one and only Allah who, General Zia convinced himself, spoke only through him. But today, eleven years later, Allah was sending him signs that all pointed to a place so dark, so final, that General Zia wished he could muster up some doubts about the Book. He knew if you didn’t have Jonah’s optimism, the belly of the whale was your final resting place.

Predictable but Contingent: The First ‘Political’ Killing at Karachi University On 25 February 1981, a group of left-wing students from the NSF and PSF was gathered at the Arts Faculty lobby of KU for a demonstration in downtown Karachi when they heard that a military jeep was parked in front of the Administration building. An army major had come to help his daughter get admitted to the university and though he was there for personal reasons, the students were enraged—this was Zia’s Pakistan, a country under military rule, where the left was living its twilight but remained a force to be reckoned with on the campuses, particularly in Karachi. As the organiser of the demonstration, Akram Qaim Khani, recalls, ‘it was a surprise. It was a challenge to us. I was a student leader and the army was in my university…’. At Khani’s instigation, the fifty-odd crowd set off for the Administration building, collected petrol from parked cars, filled a Coca-Cola bottle with it and tried to set fire to the jeep. Khani claims that he saved the driver (‘he ran away, anyway…’), so no one was hurt in the incident, but while the students—unsuccessfully—tried to set the jeep on fire, a group of Thunder Squad militants arrived on the scene and assaulted the agitators. Khani (who contracted polio in his childhood and thus suffered from limited mobility) had been spared from physical assault in the past (‘even the big badmash thought “we cannot touch Akram, otherwise his friends will kill us’”), but this time he was roughed up by Thunder Squad badmashs Farooq and Zarar Khan, and he was eventually captured, detained, and delivered to the army, which arrested him.

The irony is that scientists are much less certain about what they say than politicians, policy makers, and pundits. The certainty of the kind you see in the face of a politician declaiming on tax increases or hear in the voice of a commentator condemning or endorsing a foreign policy decision, or the certainty you detect in the words of an op-ed writer pontificating on one thing or another—I used to think that they arrived at their certainty after considering an issue in great depth and finding that the evidence fell overwhelmingly in favor of a specific position. You must think me naïve ever to have thought this way. But I did. I used to think that a good argument was the midwife to certainty. If, as I now believe, it is the wish that fathers the thought, then certainty is the lingering imprint of a wish on thoughts and arguments, like DNA retained in progeny, acting invisibly but with visible effects.

We think of memory as if it were a hard drive, he said, and in some ways that’s what it’s like, but it’s like something altogether different, too. It’s a stage and a director, and over time the play changes, the characters are changed, but it’s a funny play because we lose sight of what those characters once were to us. Memory is not static but a thing in motion, and because we are passengers without a frame of reference, the motion is imperceptible, so that at any given point in time, all we have is a set of memories, a thing of the instantaneous present and not of the past. I read somewhere, some researcher explaining that every time we recall something, our future memory of it changes, as if we rewrite or overwrite the memory with a new memory after each use in an ongoing palimpsest. Which, it strikes me, must make it hard to lose the memory of something whose memory you dearly wish to lose, which is to say that if memory serves us well, sometimes some things are blessedly forgotten.