1
Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot - will not - read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I'm in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I'm in the right. I want to love, and be loved back - but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it.Ahdaf Soueif
2
There's a strength in that look, a wilfulness; one would almost call it defiance except that it is so good-humoured. It is the look a woman would wear - would have worn - if she asked a man, a stranger, say, to dance.Ahdaf Soueif
3
I watch and listen, helpless to help. There is no point in saying "This, too, shall pass, " For a time we do not even want it to pass. We hold on to grief, fearing that its lifting will be the final betrayal.Ahdaf Soueif
4
So. Tell me. What do you think? Which is better? To take action and perhaps make a fatal mistake - or to take no action and die slowly anyway?Ahdaf Soueif
5
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 ? a shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?Ahdaf Soueif
6
The building is rather like a medieval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of God extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went.Ahdaf Soueif
7
And so the very thing that should make Egypt strong - the richness and diversity of her culture - serves to divide her and make her weak.Ahdaf Soueif