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ea41255
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It was a summer of great rumblings in the belly of the earth, of atomic flatulence and geopolitical indigestion, consequences of the consumption of sectarian chickpeas by our famished and increasingly incontinent subcontinent. Clenched beneath the tightened sphincters of test sites and silos, the pressure of superheated gases was registering in spasms on the Richter scale. Lahore was uneasy, and Immodium in short supply.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2a7e937
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and when the tension receded there was calm, the calm that is called before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.
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humanity
mortality
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Mohsin Hamid |
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1d5ba2b
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I get in, and she turns the music down. It's Nusrat, remixed and clubby, but damn good as always.
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nusrat-fateh-ali-khan
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Mohsin Hamid |
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23938fb
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A raindrop strikes the lawn, sending up a tiny plume of dust. Others follow, a barrage of dusty explosions bursting all around me. The leaves of the banyan tree rebound from their impact. The parrots disappear from sight. In the distance, the clouds seem to reach down to touch the earth. And then a curtain of water falls quietly and shatters across the city with a terrifying roar, drenching me instantly. I hear the hot concrete of the drive..
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monsoon
rain
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Mohsin Hamid |
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b3e8b39
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I like its eyes: two black dots, nonreflective light-trappers. Utterly determined eyes, doubt-free, unselfconscious. Frightening eyes if they happen to be looking at you and you're small enough to be dinner. The same eyes a man probably sees on an alligator before it drags him down and shakes the air out of his lungs and leaves him to rot a little in the murk, to be tenderized properly before he becomes a meal.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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dd067e1
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I read it over and over again, until I notice the paper getting wet, the ink blurring into little flowers.
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tears
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f2f2283
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If differences can be hidden, perhaps there aren't differences at all
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opinions
tolerance
truth
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Mohsin Hamid |
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4875864
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When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain
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life
past
uncertainty
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d21917e
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But in his devotions was ever more devotion, and towards her it seemed there was ever less.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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8df1469
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Le personalita non hanno un unico immutabile colore, come il bianco o il blu, ma sono come schermi illuminati, e le sfumature che proiettiamo dipendono da cio che ci circonda
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Mohsin Hamid |
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3538640
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E cosi, qualunque fosse la ragione, quella volta la moderazione ebbe la meglio, e l'audacia, perche ci vuole coraggio a non attaccare quando si ha paura
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Mohsin Hamid |
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9bcdd84
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Da parte sua, Saeed avrebbe voluto poter fare qualcosa per Nadia, poterla proteggere da quel che li aspettava, per quanto, a un certo livello, capisse che amare significa accettare che inevitabilmente un giorno non riuscirai a proteggere quel che hai di piu prezioso.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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afc79c8
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Quando pregava, entrava in contatto coi suoi genitori, con cui altrimenti non avrebbe piu potuto entrare in contatto, ed entrava in contatto con la sensazione che siamo tutti figli che abbiamo perso i nostri genitori, tutti, ogni uomo e donna e ragazzo e ragazza, e noi verremo persi da coloro che verranno dopo di noi e ci ameranno, e questo lutto unisce l'umanita, unisce ogni essere umano, la natura fugace del nostro essere qui, il nostro d..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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6c2276a
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When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to ackn..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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40458ff
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It's easy to be an idealist when you drive a Pajero.
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money
wealth
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Mohsin Hamid |
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fccf46a
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Would you like your money starched, sir? Box or hanger? Thanks for using GloboBank.
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money-laundering
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2a96e83
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Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimize the importance of the individual and maximize the importance of the group.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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758dcf8
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Nadia's experiences during her first months as a single woman living on her own did, in some moments, equal or even surpass the loathsomeness and dangerousness that her family had warned her about. But she had a job at an insurance company, and she was determined to survive, and so she did.
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woman
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Mohsin Hamid |
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33531e8
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I could not respect how he functioned so completely immersed in the structures of his professional micro-universe. Yes, I too had previously derived comfort from my firm's exhortations to focus intensely on work, but now I saw that in this constant striving to realize a financial future, no thought was given to the critical personal and political issues that affect one's emotional present. In other words, my blinders were coming off, and I ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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e97c7c9
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So long awaited that its coming was a shock.
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shock
wait
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2dad721
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I feel the illusion I've twirled around me like a sari start to come undone and fall to my feet.
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illusion
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Mohsin Hamid |
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e6b67af
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the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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6b991a9
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She had bumped me out of the center of my world. I'd become a baby person, and it felt good, better than what had come before.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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61406e6
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Human beings don't necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered, or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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aa598b1
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I can understand it," she said. "Imagine if you lived here. And millions of people from all over the world suddenly arrived." "Millions arrived in our country," Saeed replied. "When there were wars nearby." "That was different. Our country was poor. We didn't feel we had as much to lose." --
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Mohsin Hamid |
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ac033a0
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and in any case Nadia had taken one look at Saeed's father and felt him like a father, for he was so gentle, and evoked in her a protective caring, as if for one's own child, or for a puppy, or for a beautiful memory one know has already commenced to fade.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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ccee79c
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When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to ackn..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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bf19495
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if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowered again, and so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgias are born. Jealousy
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Mohsin Hamid |
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4164f28
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Polite?" I said, less than radiant with joy. She smiled. "I don't mean it that way," she said. "Not being polite. Respectful polite. You give people their space. I really like that. It's unusual"
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Mohsin Hamid |
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58bbb2b
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They stood and pulled off their robes, facing each other, and underneath both were wearing jeans and sweaters, there being a nip in the air tonight, and his sweater was brown and loose and hers was beige and clung to her torso like a soft second skin. He attempted chivalrously not to take in the sweep of her body, his eyes holding hers, but of course, as we know often happens in such circumstances, he was unsure as to whether or not he had ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f65d810
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It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class--in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding--but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does. ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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aa2ba8a
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One's relationship to windows now changed in the city. A window was the border through which death was possibly most likely to come. Windows could not stop even the most flagging round of ammunition: any spot indoors with a view of the outside was a spot potentially in the crossfire. Moreover the pane of a window could itself become shrapnel so easily, shattered by a nearby blast, and everyone had heard of someone or other who had bled out ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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40a9358
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It was the sort of view that might command a slight premium during gentler, more prosperous times, but would be most undesirable in times of conflict, when it would be squarely in the path of heavy machine-gun and rocket fire as fighters advanced into this part of town: a view like staring down the barrel of a rifle. Location, location, location, the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians. War
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a59145b
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Thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermittently. Of this, in later years, both were glad, and both would also wonder if this meant that they had made a mistake, that if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowe..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2e554ba
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PARENTS FIRST MET they were
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Mohsin Hamid |
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e65fd16
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but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does. Saeed
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Mohsin Hamid |
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b80c14b
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but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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368f241
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end of a couple is like a death, and the notion of death, of temporariness, can remind us of the value of things,
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Mohsin Hamid |
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892c670
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It reveals opinions and attitudes that are malleable, showing the plasticity of what in any given present moment one typically presents as a rock of certainty.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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3da1bfc
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But his dislike was so obvious, so intimate, that it got under my skin. I
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Mohsin Hamid |
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4a556aa
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most of the battle. We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d3cfde9
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You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich. Indeed, I would go so far as to say the the poor have a duty to do so, for history has shown that the inaction of the working classes perpetuates their subjugation.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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9254256
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But his dislike was so obvious, so intimate, that it got under my skin.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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78fced1
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I thought about this. As I have already told you, I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing,
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Mohsin Hamid |