I haven’t come to you only to take , I haven’t come to you empty handed : I bring you poetry as great as yours but in anther tongue , I bring you black eyes and golden skin and curly hair.
AHDAF SOUEIFA shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?
More Ahdaf Soueif Quotes
-
-
I bring you Islam and Luxor and Alexandria and Lutes and tambourines and date-palms and silk rugs and sunshine and incense and voluptuous ways.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
That narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it , caress it , collapse on to it .
AHDAF SOUEIF -
Sometimes,because we use the same words,we assume we mean the same thing
AHDAF SOUEIF -
If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
But things move on and by the time you’ve plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running -panting- to catch up.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
The white foam knows nothing better than those sands which wait for it , rise to it and suck it in .but what do the waves know of the massed, hot, still sands of the desert just twenty , no , ten feet beyond the scalloped edge ?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
And you wanted to hurry him up a little so you made a move, an unmistakable move; one that nobody could pretend had been a misunderstanding. And he – he ignored it – ignored you. What would you feel?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
A shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
And Egypt? What is Egypt strenght?her resilience ?her ability to absorb poeple and events into the pores of her being? is that true or is it just a consolation ?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? – Where the water turns a deeper blue.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
She had been wrong to think it wouldn’t matter that much to him, yes,He took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted – not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she’d put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .
AHDAF SOUEIF -
When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
So at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal. Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you’re blown away–
AHDAF SOUEIF -
Egypt.mother of civilization, dreaming herself through the centuries. Dreaming us all, her children: those who stay and work for her and complain of her, and those who leave and yearn for her and blame her with bitterness for driving them away.
AHDAF SOUEIF