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Quote by Mohja Kahf

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E-mails from Scheherazad

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Author

Mohja Kahf
Mohja Kahf

Mohja Kahf is a poet born in 1967. Her work is known for its profound personal emotion and deep insight into Middle Eastern culture. more

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“Sometimes it seems like he just wants to punish someone, anyone, for a long list of grievances that he has never made clear, which you can never ask about because he keeps his emotions so guarded that any question would be interpreted as assault. I wonder if dragging us to this village and the nearby town wear he spent his childhood is a way of sinking us all into his own personal hell so that we can see how this strange combination of poverty and opportunity, these broken and muddy roads, these crumbling houses, these overburdened men and women walking slowly in these streets singing praise songs to keep themselves going, created the strange combination of love and anger and pride and fear that is my father. He always sat in the passenger seat while we drove around the village so he could fully view what he sometimes called a world of wasted opportunity. With OJ or my mother in the car, he pointed out all the things he would make right if only he had the power. With me now, he says nothing. Occasionally he turns to look at me with the same expression that occupies his face when he has to solve a problem at the office. I sink down in my seat and wish that my mother had come.”

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“Washington, D.C. is so confusing in the spring. The days grow increasingly hot and humid, but the nights hold on to winter for as long as possible. On some days the grass is still frosted over in the mornings, stiff and crunchy, even if it wilts before the first class starts. If you are not careful you get caught in the weather's nostalgia and at night, a windbreaker or a sweater isn't enough.”

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“Danijar riprese il canto. L’inizio era sempre così timido, malsicuro, ma a poco a poco la voce prese forza, riempì la valle, andò a risvegliare l’eco nelle rocce lontane. Ciò che mi sorprendeva di più era la passione, l’ardore che permeava la melodia stessa. Non sapevo come chiamare tutto questo, e non lo so tuttora, o più esattamente non posso dire se quella fosse soltanto la voce o qualche cosa di ben più importante che usciva dal cuore stesso dell’uomo, qualche cosa capace di suscitare negli altri una simile emozione, capace di animare i più segreti pensieri. Se mi fosse possibile, in qualche modo, riprodurre la canzone di Danijar! In essa non c’erano quasi parole, essa apriva senza parole l’anima profonda dell’uomo. Né prima, né dopo, mai ho udito una canzone simile: non somigliava né alle canzoni kazake, né alle canzoni kirghise, ma c’era in essa qualcosa delle due e delle altre. La musica di Danijar portava in sé tutte le più belle melodie dei due popoli fratelli e le fondeva in una sola canzone impossibile a ripetersi. Era una canzone dei monti e delle steppe, che ora s’alzava sonora come i monti kirghisi e ora si stendeva senza barriere come la steppa kazaka.”

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“...normally I consider nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn´t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can´t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox news. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory-in Appalachia in particular-of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep who, if he ever did go up to Rocky Top in real life, would never come down again.”

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“The dreams of childhood—its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed-in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering the little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world”

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