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da769b8
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Pull a thread here and you'll find it's attached to the rest of the world.
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literature
symbolism
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Nadeem Aslam |
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a8a1d14
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Women joked amongst themselves: 'Why do you think a bride cries on her wedding day? It's for the love that this marriage is putting an end to for all eternity. Men may think a woman has no past- "you were born and then I married you"- but men are fools."
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muslim-woman
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Nadeem Aslam |
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256a7e9
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On the journey towards the beloved, you live by dying at every step
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war
history
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Nadeem Aslam |
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fd096f6
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There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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cd2f626
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Nothing is an accident: it's always someone's fault; perhaps-but no one teaches us how to live with our mistakes. Everyone is isolated, alone with his or her anguish and guilt, and too penetrating a question can mean people are not able to face one another the next day.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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c94950f
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There is nothing that torments Satan more than the sight of a faithful in prayer.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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7247b43
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A lie does not become truth just because ten people are telling it.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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af4f05b
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The neighbourhood is a place of...intrigue and emotional espionage, where when two people stop to talk on the street, their tongues are like the two halves of a scissor coming together, cutting reputations and good names to shreds.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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a841aec
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All those who love know exactly the limit they're prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.
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romance
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Nadeem Aslam |
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9c52f99
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All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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1dcc893
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The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.
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literature
islamism
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Nadeem Aslam |
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431d456
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History is the third parent.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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7550772
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The young everywhere...would prefer to live in houses that consist only of doors.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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26bff1b
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There are no innocent people in a guilty nation.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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339bbbf
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Love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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92c3d43
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Even the air of this country has a story to tell about warfare. It is possible here to lift a piece of bread from a plate and following it back to its origins, collect a dozen stories concerning war-how it affected the hand that pulled it out of the oven, the hand that kneaded the dough, how war impinged upon the field where wheat was grown.
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war
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Nadeem Aslam |
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3bf82f4
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To visit certain streets was to realise that only the sky remained unchanged there.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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9afc981
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Wounds are said to emit light under certain conditions - touch them and the brightness will stay on the hands - and as candles burn Rohan thinks of each flame as an injury somewhere in his house.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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c8d97f4
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Afghanistan had collapsed and everyone's life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble.
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war
prose
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Nadeem Aslam |
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d7c3c90
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How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.
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literature
philosophy
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Nadeem Aslam |
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72f926b
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Modesty and decency dwell in the mind, not in a burka.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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313b406
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He would drift through the house in search of the coolest spot to read through the long summer afternoons that had a touch of eternity to them, altering the arrangement of his limbs as much for comfort as for the fear that his undisturbed shadow would leave a stain on the wall.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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515fb31
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God is just a name for our wonder.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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634d484
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It is possible to think of fragrance existing before a flower was created to contain it, and so it is that God created the world to reveal Himself, to reveal Mercy. Once or twice a year, perhaps three times, a woman visits the garden, her face ancient, the eyes calm but not passive as she approaches the rosewood tree and begins to pick and examine each fallen leaf. Whether she is in possession of her full mental faculties, no one is sure. P..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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f889b32
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The opposite of war is not peace but civilisation, and civilisation is purchased with violence and cold-blooded murder. With war.
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war
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Nadeem Aslam |
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f095567
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The sky is a blue so clean it verges on joy.
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sky-blue
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Nadeem Aslam |
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295e2d6
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If love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness, then he had loved Mikal since they were ten years old.... This almost-brother. This blood-love in everything but name.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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944b16e
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Wolves exhibiting strange behaviour -- caught in traps and thrashing about, injured by other creatures or by bullets, pups suffering from epilepsy -- are attacked and killed by their pack members. But here everyone is human and must try to understand each other's mystery. Each other's pain.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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178984b
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But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again--their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of anoth..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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09f692c
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This is among the few things that can be said about love with any confidence. It is small enough to be contained within the heart but, pull thin, it would drape the entire world.
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love-for-humanity
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Nadeem Aslam |
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1d69503
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We walk past the house with the blue door. It has been made clear to us that we are to walk quietly by this house, never accept an invitation to step inside, never return the smile of the woman of the house, nor glance at the old man who sometimes looks out of the upstairs window; at our peril are we to be tempted by the flowers lying under the eaves, or by the figs that the storms shake loose. But our shadows dare each other. One of them i..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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8aec684
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She thought of the boy thrown into the cauldron of war, the girl beset by various bigotries, her life in danger, and saw how unjust it all was, her fury limitless for a few moments. And she felt a sense of shame, something akin to accusation from them towards her and her generation, for not having constructed a better world to welcome and contain their beauty, to house their spirit. --
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Nadeem Aslam |
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aaf63de
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Only twenty - nine years in the entire human history had been without warfare, and now here he was too, travelling between the episodes of a rapacious civil war.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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6b2400b
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From the book he carefully tears out several maps, and in this light Afghanistan's mountains and hills and restlessly branching corridors of rock appear as though the pages are crumpled up, and there is a momentary wish in him to smooth them down. Laser-guided bombs are falling onto the pages in his hands, missiles summoned from the Arabian Sea, from American warships that are as long as the Empire State Building is tall.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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227890e
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I don't feel old. I just feel like someone young who has something wrong with him.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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91b9c85
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When a coin is minted, the devil kisses it.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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12336d6
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The scent of the tree's flowers can stop conversation. Rohan knows no purer source of melancholy.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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2dcb749
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Tell me,' the man leans forward and says, 'have you heard of a lady called Madeleine? No? In 1996, this lady named Albright Madeleine, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked on television how she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions? Do you know what she said? She said that it was "a very hard choice" but "we think the price is worth it". These are her exact ..
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iraq-sanctions
madeleine-albright
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Nadeem Aslam |
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f6dd64a
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The West wants unconditional love; failing that, unconditional surrender.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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9507d22
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A daughter, a wife, a grandson,' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own country in the West to set up a home among them in the East, and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his foolish mistake. His life smashed to pieces by the barbarians surrounding him.
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war
history
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Nadeem Aslam |
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9e57c3b
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He led her back to the house, the perfume from the acacia clinging to her. The djinn was supposed to live in the scent of the acacia blossom, making themselves visible only to the young in order to entrap them in otherworldly world.
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war
history
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Nadeem Aslam |
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f04b85b
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The bigger the sin, the rarer and more expensive the bird that is needed to erase it. Is that how the bird pardoner conducts his business? A sparrow for a small deception, but a paradise flycatcher and a monal pheasant for allowing a doubt about His existence to enter the mind.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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f985fb9
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He knows that had he been a young man himself he would not have stopped at Peshawar: he doesn't know how he would have resisted entering Afghanistan. And not just for help and aid - he would have fought and defended with his arms. And, yes, had he been present in the United States of America back in September, he would have done all he could to save the blameless from dying in those attacked cities, partaken in their calamity. How not to as..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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e0d3649
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We are not men of hate, but we must be men of justice.
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Nadeem Aslam |