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?
AHDAF SOUEIFI 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.
More Ahdaf Soueif Quotes
-
-
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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
Tell me, if you thought a man had a tendresse for you, but he wasn’t doing anything about it.
AHDAF SOUEIF -
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 -
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 -
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.
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 -
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.
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 -
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 -
A shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?
AHDAF SOUEIF -
If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?
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