1
How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.Nadeem Aslam
2
All those who love know exactly the limit they're prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.Nadeem Aslam
3
The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.Nadeem Aslam
4
Even the air of this country has a story to tell about warfare. It is possible here to lift a piece of bread from a plate and following it back to its origins, collect a dozen stories concerning war-how it affected the hand that pulled it out of the oven, the hand that kneaded the dough, how war impinged upon the field where wheat was grown.Nadeem Aslam
5
On the journey towards the beloved, you live by dying at every stepNadeem Aslam
6
Afghanistan had collapsed and everyone's life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble.Nadeem Aslam
7
But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again–their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of another system.Nadeem Aslam
8
He led her back to the house, the perfume from the acacia clinging to her. The djinn was supposed to live in the scent of the acacia blossom, making themselves visible only to the young in order to entrap them in otherworldly world.Nadeem Aslam
9
A daughter, a wife, a grandson, ' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own country in the West to set up a home among them in the East, and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his foolish mistake. His life smashed to pieces by the barbarians surrounding him.Nadeem Aslam
10
Women joked amongst themselves: 'Why do you think a bride cries on her wedding day? It's for the love that this marriage is putting an end to for all eternity. Men may think a woman has no past- "you were born and then I married you"- but men are fools.Nadeem Aslam
11
The sky is a blue so clean it verges on joy.Nadeem Aslam
12
Tell me, ' the man leans forward ans says, 'have you heard of a lady called Madeleine? No? In 1996, this lady named Albright Madeleine, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked on television how she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions? Do you know what she said? She said that it was "a very hard choice" but "we think the price is worth it". These are her exact words. How do you feel about that?' How do you think I feel about that? And I would take your love for children more seriously if you didn't have children cleaning your floors.Nadeem Aslam
13
Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.Nadeem Aslam
14
Love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness.Nadeem Aslam
15
Not even God can change the past.Nadeem Aslam
16
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.Nadeem Aslam
17
God is just a name for our wonder.Nadeem Aslam
18
There are no innocent people in a guilty nation.Nadeem Aslam