Uzma Aslam Khan QUOTES

1 " Somewhere in the great sky beyond this sky of planes was a star made entirely of words. And on the star lived as many different kinds of words as birds in all the skies, fish in all the seas, and clay patterns in all the hands of adoring women. Some words were cautious as the crabs nesting on the beach. Others, bold as the giant hornbills prattling in the trees. Then there were those that made no sound, but were equally fearless, folding their arms and waiting for her to sit on their lap. The prisoner who was no longer a prisoner was gathering all these many words to herself and would speak them, if there were but someone to listen, even a little. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

2 " Have you noticed that when men want freedom, the conversation is about the nature of action, violence or non-violence? But when women want freedom, the conversation is about the nature of women, natural or unnatural? "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

3 " My faith is what they bury when they force me to expose it. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Geometry of God

4 " She leaves the spoon and takes my face in her hands. They're warm and smell devine. She holds me, whispering, "God help him understand you are still a child. God give you health and prosperity. God release you from all you wish to be released from." I shut my eyes and hope she never releases me. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Geometry of God

5 " Never was a wind between teeth so exasperated. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , Thinner Than Skin

6 " I feared her love for me was like a Pakistani glacier. It was difficult to say if it was growing or retreating. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , Thinner Than Skin

7 " I'd been missing this, the ease of being with someone without speaking, without suppressing speech. I'd grown up with it in Karachi, where groups of men will congregate in the smallest spaces -- the grass between houses, a roundabout -- spaces made more generous through companionable silence. It existed between women too, this bond. My sister and her friends could spend hours reclining together on a bed, or a carpet. If secrets were murmured, it happened in a style so intuited it was pre-verbal. I hadn't experienced this very much in the West, where it seemed people had a reason for everything, including intimacy. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan

8 " Could love, like pain, migrate to a different part of the body? "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

9 " The opposite of peace is not war. The opposite of peace is inertia. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

10 " Not all of us are horrid,’ he told her once. ‘Not all of us think of all Indians as our subjects.’ All Indians? Us? She did not know how to explain that she had never trusted these words and did not know what was worse, being a part of all or not, as it seemed the decision had never been hers to make. Nor did she know how to explain that it was not a question of what one or two might think. It had more to do with the patterns inherited, the lies inhabited, though she could not find the words, and so she said nothing. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

11 " How secure is a forty-year-old state? I remember the garrison towns of the Punjab plains, the fenced-off lands, the young soldiers, and I have my answer. To a republic, forty is infancy. And this is its horror, as it carves itself from ancient land, ancient water. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Geometry of God

12 " It was here the land spoke to him most, in a region that lay high in the north of what was now Kazakhstan, though to the nomads with whom he was to spend the next three summers, all of Central Asia was one land, divided not into states but into mountain and steppe, desert and oasis. The steppe nomads made him feel he was looking back in time--his time. It was the strangest sensation, the first day he was invited to break bread with them. It was as though a mountain inside him were melting, leaving him naked and cleansed, entirely in his own skin, the skin he used to inhabit in the valley of his youth...before he had to don a thousand skins. In the steppe, he was undisguised, unwary, unwanting. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , Thinner Than Skin

13 " Wasn't sunrise meant to be the hour of hope? 'The season of creation' some poet or other had once called it. Fucking poet. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , Thinner Than Skin

14 " She was given legs to enter the other world, but at what cost? She lost her community. She became neither mermaid nor human. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

15 " Nu așa și-o amintea pe Anu. Se schimbase. N-ar fi vrut să fie așa. Ar fi vrut să fie neclintită, ca stânca pe care stătea în timp ce el și tatăl lui plecau să exploreze. Erau ca un tot, ca o vază de cristal. Ea lumina din spate, iar tatăl lui conducea expediția, ca o avangardă strălucitoare. Odată conducătorul plecat, ea devenise ciudată, ca un puț neacoperit. Iar lui îi era teamă să se uite prea adânc în el. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , Trespassing

16 " She too waited patiently for the right moment to speak, hands folded, tilting back her head like a sunbird after a refreshing drink. "

― Uzma Aslam Khan , The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali