|
da25403
|
Not--please understand me--that I was convinced that I had made a mistake; no, I was merely unconvinced that I had not made a mistake. I was, in other words, confused.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
f2c3a59
|
we learned to savor the denial of gratification--that most un-American of pleasures!--
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
9e110f7
|
She slips her arm around my shoulders and cradles my head against her breast. We breathe together. Slowly. Time passes, flowing, a long, less and less painful sigh. And I shut my eyes. Pain becomes only physical again. Fear recedes. Anger flickers for a moment longer, gas in the pipes after the stove has been turned off. She says, "I'll take care of you." And I feel gratitude and happiness rise up inside me: old friends, long-forgotten and ..
|
|
love
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
59d4b20
|
most powerful military in the world is sent to do a task best accomplished by schoolteachers, police forces, persuasion, and time.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
437f8fe
|
She's finished her cigarette but hasn't put it out properly, so it's still smoking in the ashtray. I crush mine into it, grinding until both stop burning.
|
|
love
passion
smoke
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
bf9170a
|
Saeed for his part wished he could do something for Nadia, could protect her from what would come, even if he understood, at some level, that to love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you. He thought she deserved better than this, but he could see no way out, for they had decided not to run, not to play roulette with yet another departure. To flee forever is beyond the capacity ..
|
|
love
protection
running
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
fc6b4f5
|
It is odd, isn't it? Whenever I read something interesting, I tear out a piece and keep it as a talisman until I find something new to replace it with. It's a sort of superstition. I did it once and it helped me break out of writer's block, so I've done it ever since. Librarians must hate me.
|
|
books
librarian
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
a70f64a
|
In their phones were antennas, and these antennas sniffed out an invisible world, as if by magic, a world that was all around them, and also nowhere, transporting them to places distant and near, and to places that had never been and would never be.
|
|
connectivity
internet
mobile-phones
phones
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
8a9e29e
|
A single strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism... I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage.
|
|
terrorism
war
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
0a29ee7
|
There is something magical about London. It can coax a water lily to tie its roots to land.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
f5120c4
|
and all sorts of strange people were around, people who looked more at home than she was, even the homeless ones who spoke no English, more at home maybe because they were younger, and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
fbdca20
|
As he sat he felt the outside of her thigh, firm, against his, and she felt the outside of his, likewise firm, against hers. She said, "Aren't you going to take that off?" She meant the black robe, which he had forgotten he was wearing, and he looked down at himself and over at her, and smiled, and answered, "You first." She laughed. "Together, then." "Together." They stood and pulled off their robes, facing each other, and underneath both ..
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
c7699e7
|
LATER THAT DAY, in the evening, Nadia's time, the sun having slipped below her horizon, it was morning in the San Diego, California, locality of La Jolla, where an old man lived by the sea, or rather on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
04f0dd7
|
Once as Nadia sat on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone across the street from a detachment of troops and a tank, she thought she saw online a photograph of herself sitting on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone across the street from a detachment of troops and a tank, and she was startled and wondered how this could be. How she could both read this news and be this news. And how the newspaper could have..
|
|
mobile-phones
news
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
7da6520
|
Soon a rhythm was established, and it was thereafter rare that more than a few waking hours would pass without contact between them, and they found themselves in those early days of their romance growing hungry, touching each other, but without bodily adjacency, without release. They had begun, each of them, to be penetrated, but they had not yet kissed.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
480bd1b
|
Saeed prayed a great deal, and so did his father, and so did their guests, and some of them wept, but Saeed had wept only once, when he first saw his mother's corpse and screamed, and Saeed's father wept only when he was alone in his room, silently, without tears, his body seized as though by a stutter, or a shiver, that would not let go, for his sense of loss was boundless, and his sense of the benevolence of the universe was shaken, and h..
|
|
grief
loss
mourning
sorrow
weeping
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
c0173dd
|
When I wake, it seems a little less hot than usual, so I'm worried I have a fever until light flashes behind the curtains and the sound of a detonation rolls in with a force that makes the windows rattle. As I step outside with a plastic bag over my cast, a stiff breeze pulls my hair away from my face, and I see the pregnant clouds of the monsoon hanging low over the city. The rains have finally decided to come. I sit down on the lawn, rest..
|
|
monsoon
rain
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
2da88dc
|
Children are excellent judges of character, you know
|
|
children
judging-others
judging-people
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
0e2ff9b
|
She's drawn to me just as I'm drawn to her. She can't keep away. She circles, forced to keep her distance, afraid of abandoning her husband and, even more, her son for too long. But she keeps coming, like a moth to my candle, staying longer than she should, leaving late for dinners and birthday parties, singeing her wings. She's risking her marriage for me, her family, her reputation. And I, the moth circling her candle, realize that she's ..
|
|
encircle
love
moth
passion
sufism
union
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
44bbbb0
|
I'm best in small doses, believe me.
|
|
excess
quantity
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
91916ea
|
Like Manhattan? Yes, precisely! And that was one of the reasons why for me moving to New York felt- so unexpectedly- like coming home. But there were other reasons as well: the fact that Urdu was spoken by taxi cab drivers; the presence, only two blocks from my East Village apartment, of a samosa-and china-serving establishment called the Pak-Punjab Deli; the coincidence of crossing Fifth Avenue during a parade and hearing, from loudspeaker..
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
67330c0
|
for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
a9d2e45
|
Saeed was certain he was in love. Nadia was not certain what exactly she was feeling, but she was certain it had force. Dramatic circumstances, such as those in which they and other new lovers in the city now found themselves, have a habit of creating dramatic emotions, and furthermore the curfew served to conjure up an effect similar to that of a long-distance relationship, and long-distance relationships are well known for their potential..
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
4468385
|
Saeed's father wept only when he was alone in his room, silently, without tears, his body seized as though by a stutter, or a shiver, that would not let go, for his sense of loss was boundless, and his sense of the benevolence of the universe was shaken, and his wife had been his best friend.
|
|
love
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
6c9a980
|
They are pursued by a pair of hawk-faced men dressed in black and white: both forbidding, both hungry, but one tall and slender, the other short and fat. Two reflections of the same soul in the cosmic house of mirrors, or uncanny coincidence? It is impossible to say.
|
|
moth-smoke
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
ea91530
|
Lightning flickered above the city, a crescent moon sneered through a gap in the clouds. The boutique huddled against the storm, a tiny island of light on an unlit street.
|
|
storm
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
7f2e750
|
Mumtaz has six moles. Two are black: behind her ear and on her hip, in the trough of the wave that crests at her pelvis. Three are the color of rust: knuckle, corner of jaw, behind knee. And one is red, fiery, at the base of her spine, where a tail might grow. I touch them and know them because I watch her like a man in a field stares up at the stars, and I love her constellation because it contains her story and our story, and I wonder whi..
|
|
mole
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
2889a36
|
But Saeed's father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and he knew above all else that his son must go, and what he did not say was that he had come to that point in a parent's life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one's child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can..
|
|
old
old-age
son
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
900fe8d
|
My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of its funeral pyre or transformed so that what emerged was a soulless shadow of its former being, identical in appearance but without the joy in life its predecessor had had. He wondered alternatively whether the fire might be purificatory, a redemptive, rejuvenating blaze that destroyed the withered shell of the old phoenix and allowed the creature's essence to..
|
|
phoenix
rebirth
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
fcdf57c
|
People don't believe in consequences anymore.
|
|
effect
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
9d6d66c
|
Some things are too good. They make everything else worthless.
|
|
pleasures
worth-quotes
worthiness
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
54777e9
|
A woman walks by the gate, leading a little boy with a balloon of hunger in his belly and hair bleached by malnutrition.
|
|
poverty
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
a559803
|
So Erica felt better in a place like this, separated from the rest of us, where people could live in their minds without feeling bad about it.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
044a152
|
My mind disappears behind desperate terror.
|
|
fear
terror
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
ed6a309
|
If the choice is between being held up at gunpoint or holding the gun, only a madman would choose to hand over his wallet rather than fill it with someone else's cash.
|
|
stealing
theft
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
3886bdf
|
Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
6c86991
|
for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
e31706c
|
If one had asked Manucci during his days as a street urchin, as he sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah, Manucci would probably have said that ACs were hot. The first time he saw one jutting out into the street from the wall of a shop in the old city, he walked up to the noisy box and was amazed at the blast of hot air it sent straight into his face. Why do people turn on hot air in the middle of summer? he often..
|
|
air-conditioning
lahore
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
64f24bd
|
Although I proudly admit to being a robber (attaching as I do a certain prestige to my calling), I must make it quite clear, so clear that there is no room for doubt, that I am not a murderer. And while it is true that outlaws of both departments are schooled by the faculty of lawlessness, it is equally true that they are separated by a moral chasm as vast as the difference in syllabi which divides BA candidates from those pursuing a BSc.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
d1c5939
|
A little paranoia crawls into my lap, purring loudly.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
0894554
|
Not that he isn't horrible to most of the planet, he is. But if Ozi loves you, you know it. You can swim in it, get a tan. Or rest in its shade, if you'd rather.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
0993cfc
|
I love it when you talk about where you come from," she said, slipping her arm through mine, "you become so alive."
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
df02578
|
Hoarse voice, from intimacy's border with asthma: parched beaches, dust whipped by the wind. Very sexy but not much to drink.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |
|
c81ad40
|
Power comes from becoming change.
|
|
|
Mohsin Hamid |