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c654dc5
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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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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
|
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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38a8d6a
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America is our enemy; America should give us more aid.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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557f359
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ambitious cleric position: "Religion makes us all equal; only I decide what religion says."
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Mohsin Hamid |
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2807ae8
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flying robots from an alien power regularly strike down from the skies and kill Pakistani citizens.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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b6da803
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I'm more unsettled than nervous. It's like I'm an oyster. I've had this sharp speck inside me for a long time, and I've been trying to make it more comfortable, so slowly I've turned it into a pearl.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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77a999b
|
Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayer for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.
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prayer
religion
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Mohsin Hamid |
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835ebe7
|
Saeed went with his father to pray on the first Friday after the curfew's commencement, and Saeed prayed for peace and Saeed's father prayed for Saeed and the preacher in his sermon urged all the congregants to pry for the righteous to emerge victorious in the war but carefully refrained from specifying on which side of the conflict he thought the righteous to be.
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prayer
religion
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f40fda9
|
I just gritted my teeth, took out a needle, and worked him out of my heart like a splinter.
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healing
moving-on-and-letting-go
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Mohsin Hamid |
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fac936f
|
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
|
depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself...
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Mohsin Hamid |
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86cf631
|
Ogni volta che si spostano, due partner, se la loro attenzione e ancora rivolta l'uno verso l'altra, cominciano a vedersi in modo diverso, perche 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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dc893d6
|
e quando usciva l'anziana signora aveva la sensazione di essere emigrata anche lei, che tutti emigriamo anche se restiamo nella stessa casa per tutta la vita, perche non possiamo evitarlo. Siamo tutti migranti attraverso il tempo.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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e0570a8
|
what is natural in one place can seem unnatural in another, and some concepts travel rather poorly, if at all.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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141a862
|
Now, though, in Marin, Saeed prayed even more, several times a day, and he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. 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 ..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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b145e8e
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I found it ironic; children and the elderly were meant to be sent away from impending battles, but in our case it was the fittest and brightest who were leaving, those who in the past would have been most expected to remain.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f87bab4
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but I would suggest that it is instead our solitude that most disturb us, the fact that we are all but alone despite being in the heart of a city.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d0ab922
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Indeed, all books, each and every book ever written, could be said to be said to be offered to the reader as a form of self-help. Textbooks, those whores, as particularly explicit in acknowledging this, and it is with a textbook that you, at this moment, after several years in the city, are walking down the street.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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7bb5bb0
|
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.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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4620230
|
The alliance between the US and Pakistan is thus predominantly between the US and the Pakistani military.
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Mohsin Hamid |