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 SOUEIFEgypt.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.
More Ahdaf Soueif Quotes
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From 1949 to the present, for every dollar the US spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on an Israeli, and for every dollar it spent on someone from the Western Hemisphere outside the US, it spent $214 on an Israeli.
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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.
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They’re only there to wait for the men. To love them and be loved back or not — mostly not; to be beaten up or killed; to appear as a face on the wall of Meurseault’s cell.
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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.
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If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?
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Sometimes,because we use the same words,we assume we mean the same thing
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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 .
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You know, I’ve been thinking: all the women in the books you like — Sartre and Camus and all that — they don’t really exist. Not as people.
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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.
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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 ?
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I now find myself looking at every sentence, every image, that purports to tell the West about the Arabs and the Muslims with this question in mind: to what extent does it feed into existing stereotypes and established prejudice?
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Tell me, if you thought a man had a tendresse for you, but he wasn’t doing anything about it.
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A shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?
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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.
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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 SOUEIF