Arab Quotes

“...and he laughed a laugh she loved more than the warmest of fires on the coldest of nights.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame

“But eyes couldn’t stay closed forever, unless one was dead. And the dead never dreamed.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame

“I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.”
― Gibran Kahlil Gibran

“A monster. For a monster will always be enslaved to a master.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame

“The beauty that withstands all. Stubborn in the harshest of atmospheres.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame

“A flower. White and whiskered in a fringe of ice. Silken petals held together in a loose grip”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Hunt the Flame

“أما العمل الأخطر فهو أن تحضر مهرجانًا شعريًّا يؤمّه هذا الطّراز من الشّعراء، عامّة هناك نوعان من الشّعر حاليًّا... شعر (أتدحرج عبر الطّرقات الشّتويّة... تختفي أزمنة اللّاجدوى...) [...] النّوع الثّاني من الشّعر السّائد حاليًّا هو (مات الّذي قد كان نبراسًا... من بعده ساد الأسى النّاسا)... سوف تسمع الكثير جدًّا من هذا الكلام حتّى ينفجر رأسك، ثمّ يظهر ناقد يمطّ شفته السّفلى في قرف ويتكلّم عن: "البنية الإبداعيّة الكوزموبوليتانيّة في إرهاصات ما بعد الحداثة. هذه هي الممارسة المنهجيّة القوليّة الّقديّة تشكف عن نفسها داخل الطّرح البنيويّ".”
― أحمد خالد توفيق, فقاقيع

“Mond el mit olvasol, es elmondom,
hogy mit gondolsz.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“The participation if women in some armies in the world is in reality only symbolic. The talk about the role of Zionist women in fighting with the combat units of the enemy in the war of 5 June 1967 was intended more as propaganda than anything real or substantial. It was calculated to intensify and compound the adverse psychological effects of the war by exploiting the backward outlook of large sections of Arab society and their role in the community. The intention was to achieve adverse psychological effects by saying to Arabs that they were defeated, in 1967, by women.”
― Saddam Hussein, The Revolution and Woman in Iraq

“The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.”
― Zeina Kassem, Crossing

“And I withdrew into myself when I understood that they wanted to extract every thought in my head, one by one, like decayed teeth.”
― Alia Mamdouh

“Don't be afraid of books, even the most dissident, seemingly 'immoral' ones. Culture is a sure bet in life, whether high, low, eclectic, pop, ancient or modern. And I am convinced that reading is one of the most important tools of liberation that any human being, and a contemporary Arab woman in particular, can exploit. I am not saying it is the ONLY tool, especially with all the new alternative - more visual, interactive and hasty - ways of knowledge, learning and growth. But how could I not be convinced of literature's power, when it has been my original emancipator?”
― Joumana Haddad, I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

“Based on the considerations of history, ancient history, and international axioms, the logic of following up a citizen with his shadow for the purpose of the demarcation of political frontiers of any state has been discounted for international conventions. For example the Arabs cannot ask Spain just because they were there some time in the past nor can they ask for any other area outside the frontiers of the Arab homeland”
― Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein on Current Events in Iraq

“It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.”
― Moshe Dayan

“The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

“By the time of the arrival of Islam in the early seventeenth century CE, what we now call the Middle East was divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires. But with the spread of this new religion from Arabia, a powerful empire emerged, and with it a flourishing civilization and a glorious golden age.

Given how far back it stretches in time, the history of the region -- and even of Iraq itself -- is too big a canvas for me to paint. Instead, what I hope to do in this book is take on the nonetheless ambitious task of sharing with you a remarkable story; one of an age in which great geniuses pushed the frontiers of knowledge to such an extent that their work shaped civilizations to this day.”
― Jim Al-Khalili

“I always have believed that we should not call it an Arab-Israeli issue or a Palestinian-Arab dispute or a peace negotiation. I think we should call it what it is: an occupation of Palestine, full stop. This is not a popular position in mixed company.”
― Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Blankets become Jackets

“...It is only now that memory works both ways. Which of us dreamed it - those from the country of nights five times as warm and as cold, or those who turned away and woke?”
― Angele Ellis

“Dearly I yearn for my mother’s bread,
My mother’s coffee,
Mother’s brushing touch.
Childhood is raised in me,
Day upon day in me.
And I so cherish life
Because if I died
My mother’s tears would shame me.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

“There wasn’t a question of what compromise there should be or what kind of peace process we should engage in. There was only one discussion: How do we remove the colonial power that is occupying our
country?”
― Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Blankets become Jackets

“In Arabia - Arabia Desert - at the time of the prophet Muhammad, other prophets also preached: Maslama of the tribe of the Banu Hanifa in the Yamama, the very heart of Arabia; and Hanzala ibn Safwan; and Khalid ibn Sinan. Maslama's God was ar-Rahman, 'the Merciful'; today Muslims pray to Allah, ar-Rahman. Khalid ibn Sinan was sent to the tribe of 'Abs; for a time, he was followed, but then he was lost. Prophets are not always false simply because they are overtaken, and swallowed up, by history. Men of worth have always roamed the desert.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“Jana was loved by all the Libyan moms, especially the ones with eligible sons. Elizza was not such a big hit. She got along great with everyone, but the moms looked at her with a sort of disapproval. They couldn’t quite put their finger on what exactly they disapproved of. They just had an instinct that this girl would give their son trouble if he was to marry her, and so they warned each other with subtle looks and some outright rude comments about her, to steer their sons away. They wanted someone haadiya for their sons. Elizza was still trying to tap down the exact Arabic to English translation of that word, but the general idea of it was quiet, shy, obedient. All she knew was, she was not it.”
― Hannah Matus, A Second Look

“I hate lying to my daughter’s face, but her questions have plagued me for years.”
― Rania Hanna, The Jinn Daughter

“The UAE Sonnet

I'm asked to compare USA with UAE,
So here it is, in my free form sonnetary.

For starters, there is no comparison -
UAE is a civilized country, USA is not.
Sure UAE has its share of violations,
like every living country in the world,

but unlike USA, the incredible growth
and the very birth of UAE is not founded
on the worst kind of atrocities in history.

In fact, forget the rich, safe and
prosperous UAE - on the civilization scale
USA is the bottom scraper of history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“I'm asked to compare USA with UAE,
So here it is, in my free form sonnetary.

For starters, there is no comparison -
UAE is a civilized country, USA is not.
Sure UAE has its share of violations,
like every living country in the world,

but unlike USA, the incredible growth
and the very birth of UAE is not founded
on the worst kind of atrocities in history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“If one called this entire zone Arab-Judeo land, and then split it fairly between its residents—289 million Arabs, and 5.4 million Jews—the Jews would be entitled to a state that is at least 10 times the current size of Israel and the territories. To arrive at this figure one must simply divide the number Jews in Arab-Judeo land by the number of Arabs and Jews combined living in Arab-Judeo (5,400,000 Jews divided by 294,400,000). The result is that Jews total only 1.834% of the people of Arab-Judeo land. But 1.834% x 6,155,939 square miles yields nearly 113,000 square miles, a landmass nearly 14 times the size of pre-1967 Israel, and over 10 times the size of Israel and the territories taken together. Apportioning the land evenly on a per person basis is fair and moral in light of the fact that until the de facto expulsion of Jews in the middle of the last century, there were Jews all over Arab-Judeo land.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“Sometimes, to get love, 'Azāzīl needs to become Iblis.”
― Adil Alzarooni, The Red Island: The Gatekeeper

“It can be hard to live a life without love and hope, watch the years go by uneventfully. You start seeing life as the real tragedy and death as a blessing.”
― Adil Alzarooni, The Red Island: The Gatekeeper

“It’s probably easier to heal wounded animals than broken humans.”
― Adil Alzarooni, The Red Island: The Gatekeeper