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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 |
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muscularity, made more pronounced by her gauntness, and the near-inanimate
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a719ab9
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You're a watchful guy. You know where that comes from?" I shook my head. "It comes from feeling out of place," he said. "Believe me. I know"
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Mohsin Hamid |
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fac936f
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Cooking for him is a craft of spice and oil. His food burns the tongue and clogs the arteries. When he looks around him here, he does not see prickly leaves and hairy little berries for an effervescent salad, tan stalks of wheat for a heavenly balloon of sone-ground, stove-top-baked flatbread. He sees instead units of backbreaking toil. He sees hours and days and weeks and years. He sees the labor by which a farmer exchanges his allocation ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2bc576d
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Avevano cominciato, entrambi, a essere penetrati, ma non si erano ancora dati un bacio.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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62315e2
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depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself
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Mohsin Hamid |
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00f4bc9
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depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself...
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Mohsin Hamid |
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8e09e9f
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I was honored and pleased that she was confiding in me in this fashion. I met her eyes, and for the first time I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a diamond that becomes visible only when viewed through a magnifying lens; normally it is hidden by the brilliance of the stone. I wanted to know what it was, what had caused her to create the pearl of which she had spoken. But I thought it would be presu..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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36001ed
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If you don't pray," he said, lowering his voice, "why do you wear it?" They were sitting at a table for two by a window, overlooking snarled traffic on the street below. Their phones rested screens-down between them, like the weapons of desperadoes at a parley. She smiled. Took a sip. And spoke, the lower half of her face obscured by her cup. "So men don't fuck with me," she said."
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Mohsin Hamid |
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47995b3
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Location, location, location, the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians. War
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Mohsin Hamid |
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46aa0b1
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But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's
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Mohsin Hamid |
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5452960
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But since the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, terrorists have killed many times that number of people in Pakistan. Tens of thousands have died here in terror and counterterror violence, slain by bombs, bullets, cannons, and drones. America's 9/11 has given way to Pakistan's 24/7/365. The battlefield has been displaced. And in Pakistan it is much more bloody.
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middle-east
pakistan
pakistan-united-states-relations
politics
terrorism
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Mohsin Hamid |
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bdad592
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There is in such situations usually a moment of passion during which the unthinkable is said; this is followed by a sense of euphoria at finally being liberated; the world seems fresh, as if seen for the first time; then comes the inevitable period of doubt, the desperate and doomed backpedaling of regret; and only later, once emotions have receded, is one able to view with equanimity the journey through which one has passed.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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604b5d2
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The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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ffddfa6
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Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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48449ee
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to read a novel is to engage in probably the second-largest single act of pleasure-based data transfer that can take place between two human beings,
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Mohsin Hamid |
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7daa693
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exceeded only by sex.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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8b8aabe
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Sufis tell of two paths to transcendence:
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Mohsin Hamid |
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30b0a17
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one is to look out at the universe and see yourself, the other is to look within yourself and see the universe.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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ed010e1
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it's possible to open our eyes, to see, to recognize our solitude--and at the same time to not be entirely alone.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a05f237
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Rimsha Masih fiasco--in which they had championed the execution of a fourteen-year-old mentally disabled Christian girl for the crime of blasphemy, only to be roundly rebuffed by a rare confluence of sane elements within Pakistan's legal system, media, civil society, and clergy, who collectively revealed that she had been framed by a property-coveting local mullah--they
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Mohsin Hamid |
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bf8ce4d
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How odd it would be to call Homer's Iliad or Rumi's Masnavi "the Great Eastern Mediterranean Poem."
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d5130ae
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Painted images of F-16s given by America were appearing on the backs of buses under the words "God is great."
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Mohsin Hamid |
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6dc7007
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Armed college students were telling women to cover their heads.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d020eb1
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courage is demanded not to attack when afraid,
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d30be15
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In America, the murky, unknown places of the world are blank screens:
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Mohsin Hamid |
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e3322d4
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stories of evil can be projected on them with as little difficulty as stories of good.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2a2ccb0
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In Pakistan, my friends and family are frightened, as they should be when the
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f465ded
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The world will not fail if Pakistan fails, but the world will be healthier if Pakistan is healthy.
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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 |