1
" She felt the urge to tell him more, to explain about the abortions she had done after the war, and that she hadn’t realised until later, much later, that she had racked up a debt she was still struggling to repay. How could he know – he was just a soldier, he had killed as a matter of principle, but the war babies, the children of rape, had been left to junior doctors, the volunteers in ragged tents on the outskirts of town. "
― Tahmima Anam , The Good Muslim (Bangla Desh, #2)
6
" The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,That host with their banners at sunset were seen:Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.And there lay the rider distorted and pale,With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! "
7
" It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon. I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate de foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts. "
9
" Lou took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of just-cut flowers, fresh tamales from the food stands, and sunshine. She preferred the West Allis farmers' market to all others in the area, with its open sides, wide walkways, and rows of stalls. More recently, small tents serving hot sandwiches and fresh Mexican food had popped up outside the brick walls. It all looked so good, she'd learned long ago to come with limited funds or she would buy more produce than she could possibly use. She relished talking to the farmers, learning about what they grew and where. She liked to search for farmers growing something new and interesting she could use at Luella's.
But today's visit was personal, not business. Sue had dragged her out to West Allis for a little lunch and some girl time with fall squash and Honeycrisp apples. "
― Amy E. Reichert , The Coincidence of Coconut Cake
12
" There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs
of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register
their names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing the
others around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected and
leaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they too
leaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries
lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five
thousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes and
kidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and the
pandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, to
dream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that why
was that why was that why was that why was that. "
― Salman Rushdie , Shalimar the Clown
