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سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

Book by Louis Yako · 4 quotes · Arabic Poetry, Arabic Literature, Loss

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سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere] Quotes

“(Twins in the Wound) It took me years to understand that we didn’t love each other because we were conventionally compatible or in perfect harmony, but because we were broken and shattered in the same exact places… We are twins in the wound, abandoned and banished by our families when they discovered we refused to play by the rules of the overwhelming—and overwhelmed—majority… And so, my love, I hid you from everyone, not out of shame, but out of dread of the tyranny and ignorance of the rabble… From your hidden love I learned that only love which quietly masters the art of hiding from watchful eyes and hypocrites survives in the end… May 15, 2024”

LoveTrue LoveWoundsCompanionshipForbidden LoveArabic PoetryCompatibilityArabic Literature
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“Silent Messages – 2” She sat at the crowded bus terminal, rearranging the contents of her disorganized handbag. When she lifted her head for a moment, her eyes fell on a young couple kissing, touching, and hugging in a performative, exaggerated manner. As they noticed her, the young woman cast a mean, malicious look— as if to ask, ‘Are you jealous of all the love that surrounds me?’ She returned the glance with a sly one, as if replying, ‘Love that must parade itself in public is either immature, dead, or dying…”

LoveWisdomRomanceRelationshipsMarriageFeminismTrue LoveGenderArabic PoetryArabic Literature
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“Lights” Lights of churches, monasteries, Christmas trees, and magnificent mosques. The dim lights inside warm houses in every foreign city where I wandered alone. The far-away headlights of cars crossing bridges, watched from the windows of dreary hotels on clear, moonlit nights. Candlelight and lanterns, the lights of small shops in ancient, forgotten alleys, the lights of ships sailing to places I will never see, lamp-post lights on dark, rainy winter nights, solitary lighthouses and the lights of unknown fishermen, the glittering lights I saw in the eyes of kind strangers in cities tourists never visit. All these lights I once loved now break me; they remind me of the magical light that was extinguished in your eyes…”

LoveLightLossDarknessLonelinessLongingYearningLost LoveArabic PoetryArabic Literature
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“(A Flock of Geese) She often wondered why an inexplicable sorrow wells within her each time a flock of geese takes to the sky… Do their flights remind her that she has wasted her life in the trivialities of daily existence? Or do they hint that she has lost her own capacity to fly? Sometimes, in her sadness, she reflects on years poured out like a naïve bride dreaming of the perfect groom— planning every minute detail until her wings were clipped, unaware that the bride, the groom, the wedding are roles society invented to tether those who yearn to build new worlds rather than hang in one made for them by others. When the honking of another passing flock echoes overhead—just as her most beautiful years flew by— that cry ignites in her an uncontrollable urge to depart, to reject the illusion of home and stability, the wedding and the groom, the guests dancing through the night celebrating the clipping of her wings… December 14, 2023”

LoveFreedomMarriageSocietyChainsWomen EmpowermentConventionsTraditionsArabic PoetryHeteronormativity
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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