46
" She said to him, "The Nile is superior to the Dee. I saw your Dee, it is nothing, it is Iike a stream. There are two Niles, the Blue and the White, named after their colors. They come from the south, from two different places. They travel for miles over countries with different names, never knowing they will meet. I think they get tired of running alone, it is such a long way to the sea. They want to reach the sea so that they can rest, stop running. There is a bridge in Khartoum, and under this bridge the two Niles meet. If you stand on the bridge and look down you can see the two waters mixing together. "
― Leila Aboulela , The Museum
47
" Why all this waste, why does Shamil continue when common sense says that we will win, when common sense says that they are resisting all that would be good for them?'
'What good?' She was sullen now, the arguments narrowing around her.
'What good?' he snorted. 'Peace for one, prosperity too. Modern roads, sanitation, education, enlightened thinking. Everything that is uncouth and reprehensible to be replaced by what is civilised and rational. No one in his right mind, given a choice, would choose primitiveness over advancement. You can't live in the past, Anna, you can't be like them. "
― Leila Aboulela , The Kindness of Enemies
58
" He dislikes it if I walk a few steps behind him. ‘What would people think,’ he says, ‘that we are backward, barbaric.’ He sneers at the Arab women in black abayas walking behind their men. ‘Oppressed, that’s what people would think of them. Here they respect women, treat them as equal; we must be the same,’ he says. So I have to be careful not to fall behind him in step and must bear the weight of his arm around my shoulder, another gesture he had decided to imitate to prove that, though we are Arabs and Africans, we can be modern too. "
― Leila Aboulela , Elsewhere, Home