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9a63ab5
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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 both ten years old.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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ceec681
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She listens, determined to locate the trapped bird that had called out from within the madness of suffering. But there is only silence now, not even a halting fragment. Ali! Ali! A dervish, having renounced dealings with all words except that one, never utters another, in any circumstance...The sentence enters her mind from a book she had been looking at earlier. Her gaze is drifting across the sky where the moon sits in a great cold ring a..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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ab374e6
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If I take dust in my hand and ask you if that is all the dust there is, you will answer that dust is everywhere on earth. More specks than can ever be numbered. So I can give you a handful of truth only. Besides this there are other truths. More than can ever be numbered.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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0392189
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As a child he used to wonder why Eve was taken from Adam's rib. Now, at the other end of his life, these decades later, he knows it was because the rib is close to the heart.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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6c66fa1
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Not even God can change the past.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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64b7c45
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You have spent your whole life believing such untrue things. Don't you know how alone you are, David? We are most alone when we are with the myths.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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2c1178b
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The forgiveness of the weak is the air you strong ones breath, David. Didn't you know? You don't see it but you felt it just then. They you to go on living.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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c11f41b
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But have you ever heard a story in which the evil person triumphs at the end?
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Nadeem Aslam |
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ece6a57
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In some respects, grief for the lost and missing is worse than grief for the dead, and sometimes just for a fraction of a second its intensity makes her wish Mikal would cease to exist, so she wouldn't have to wonder if she will ever see him again.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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6e2d3cb
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As in Lahore, a road in this town is named after Goethe. There is a Park Street here as in Calcutta, a Malabar Holl as in Bombay, and a Naag Tolla Hill as in Dhaka. Because it was difficult to pronounce the English names, the men who arrived in this town in the 1950s had rechristened everything they saw before them. They had come from across the Subcontinent, lived together ten to a room, and the name that one of them happened to give to a ..
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Nadeem Aslam |
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3a99bcc
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Do you hear it?" "Yes," Mikal replies. "It's a battle, isn't it?" "Yes." "It's the world," one of the other men says. "The world sounds like this all the time, we just don't hear it. Then sometimes in some places we do."
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Nadeem Aslam |
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9eb247f
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the slopes and summits that stand around them like solidified silence--time made visible in a different way, ancient and on an elongated scale.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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6e3bc77
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but the child is silent, looking as though he would rather understand than speak.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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06a6bf8
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At the gun shop, AK-47s were stacked six high on the shelves ... The day after the West invaded Afghanistan, a 'piety discount' was introduced for those who wished to buy the weapon to go the jihad.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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03ac40f
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Basie would lie on the mattress and talk endlessly, sometimes drinking from a bottle of Murree's whisky he'd bring with him, bought from one of the clandestine bars in Heer where there were locked cages for female drinkers, to prevent them from being sexually assaulted by the inebriated male clientele, as well as to stop the drunk women from killing every man in sight.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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e0be2ad
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What strange times are these," says Tara as they wend their way through the dead to safety, "when Muslims must fear other Muslims."
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Nadeem Aslam |
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015d64e
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We are warriors of Allah." "You are thugs with Korans."
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warriors
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Nadeem Aslam |
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87cae30
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How easy it is to create ghosts, he thinks as he begins to die a minute later, feeling his mind closing chamber by chamber, the memory of Naheed contained in each one. And despite it all it means much to have been loved. Just before the world vanishes, a hope surfaces in him that this wasn't necessarily everything, that he will return somehow. His arm rises, remembering when it used to be a wing.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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52fd2ae
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The soles of his shoes are worn the way the edges of erasers become rounded with use. As though he walks around correcting his mistakes.
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Nadeem Aslam |
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e1d4202
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Be careful," she said. "You can't fight a tiger." "Yes you can," he said. "You can if you are a tiger yourself."
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fight
inspirational
tiger
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Nadeem Aslam |