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61 " I love you as big as the ocean and all its fishes. As big as the sky and all its birds. As big as the earth and all her trees. "
― Susan Abulhawa , Mornings in Jenin
62 " نحن نأتي من أمّنا الأرض، نمنحها حبّنا وجهدنا، وهي، في المقابل، تُغذّينا. وعندما نموت نعود إلى الأرض؛ بطريقة ما، الأرض تمتلكنا. "
63 " لو لم أكن أعرف الشهامة الدائمة لدى الناس في المخيم، لخَشيتُ أن أكون هناك وحدي بعد حلول الظلام. "
64 " When I was a child, Haj Salem told me that answers can be foundin the sky if you look long and hard enough. "
65 " وضعت ابنة أخي على صدر أُمها النائمة و راقبت أخي؛ نظراته المشحونة بالعاطفة تترجَّح بين الزوجة و الابنة. في مخيم اللاجئين الذي ستسمِّيه إسرائيل ((أرض خصبة للإرهابيين)) و ((وكر فاسِد للإرهاب)), كنتُ شاهدة على حبٍّ يتضاءل أمامه الوجود. "
66 " He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. The Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed them authentic Jewish cuisine." They claimed the villas of Qatamon as "old Jewish homes. They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestines earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the ottomans, then sold them as their own "ancient Jewish artifacts." They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of watermelons and said, "Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges." But those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers perfecting the art of citrus growing. "
67 " Our wants were simple, but they could not have been more complicated. "
68 " He feared love more than he feared death.Because, for the hated and pursued, the reverse side of love is unbearable loss. "
69 " كنا، في مكتب ((آري)) ، ثلاثةَ أجيال تجاذبت معاً بفعل شبكة متصلة لقصة محبوسة أربَكها القدَر، و لكنها تجمعَّت في تلك اللحظة لتُطالب بأن تُحكى. قصة عائلة في قرية مغمورة، زارها ذات يوم تاريخٌ لم يكن تاريخها، و علِقت إلى الأبد في ذلك الشوق الرابط بين الجذور و التربة. كانت حكايةَ حرب، و نارَها المثيرة للقُشَعريرة، و الحارقة، و المثيرة للقشعريرة مجدَّداً. حكاية حبٍّ صاخب، و انتحاريٍّ يفجِّر نفسَه. حكاية فتاة فرَّت من مصيرها لتصبح كلمة، اسماً تلاشى معناه. حكاية أطفال كبروا يغربلون الجنون ليعثروا على مغزاهم. حكاية حقيقةٍ شقَّت طريقها عبر الأكاذيب لكي تبرز من شقٍّ، من ندبةٍ في وجه رجل ما. "
70 " Amal, I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell. I see your confusion. Consider fear. For us, fear comes where terror comes to others because we are anesthetized to the guns constantly pointed at us. And the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our own emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme. "
71 " تميل السماء علي أضلاعي المكسورة و أنا أتصور ما لا يمكن تصوره: ذلك الأب, الرجل الذي ظننت أنه لا يموت, مات "
72 " Love cannot reconcile with deception. And it cannot become inured to an existence paid for with the currency of another’s misery "
73 " Still,the refugee camp of Jenin remained as it had been, a one-square-milepatch of earth, excised from time and imprisoned in that endless yearof 1948 "
74 " In the process of trying to steady my gait in a life that shook withuncertainty, I learned to make peace with the present by unknowinglybreaking love lines to the past. Growing up in a landscape ofimprovised dreams and abstract national longings, everything felttemporary to me. "
75 " We’re all born with the greatest treasures we’ll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart. And the indispensable tools of those treasures are time and health. How you use the gifts of Allah to help yourself and humanity is ultimately how you honor him. I have tried to use my mind and my heart to keep our people linked to history, so we do not become amnesiac creatures living arbitrarily at the whim of injustice. "
76 " Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem "
77 " Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her. "
78 " Praise be to Him who brings our loved ones home from el ghurba (exile) "
79 " Then he spilled his signature phrase, to which he had earned exclusive patent: "I've seen it all." He launched into a monologue to which I listened impatiently then, but which I would revisit many years later as the greatest wisdom ever imparted to me by another human being. "We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart. And the indispensable tools of those treasures are time and health. How you use the gifts of Allah to help yourself and humanity is ultimately how you honour him. I have tried to use my mind and my heart to keep our people linked to history, so we do not become amnesiac creatures living arbitrarily at the whim of injustice. "
80 " We stood crying, Huda with tears, I with my mother's silence and taut jaw. We were enfolded in each other like the last word of an epic poem we had never imagined would end. A childhood story we had lived together line by line, hand in hand, was ending and we knew it would close the moment we unraveled our arms. "