The Kindness of Enemies
Leila Aboulela
Top 10 Best Quotes
“As if reading his mind, Jamal-al-Din said, 'To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.”
“Money is like grass. It withers. [... ] but our deeds last forever.”
“I was seeing in these awkward composites my own liminal self. The two sides of me that were slammed together against their will, that refused to mix. I was a failed hybrid, made up of unalloyed selves. My Russian mother who regretted marrying my Sudanese father. My African father who came to hate his white wife. My atheist mother who blotted out my Muslim heritage. My Arab father who gave me up to Europe without a fight. I was the freak. I had been told so and I had been taught so and I had chewed on this verdict to the extent that, no matter what, I could never purge myself of it entirely.”
“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.”
“Sufism delves into the hidden truth behind the disguise.”
“So, according to the guidelines, how should his response be classified? Did he tick this particular box or not? According to the guidelines, a student who was 'vulnerable to radicalisation' would have symptoms of regression, a hankering for an idealised past, a misguided belief in authenticity.”
“Peace was a more dignified version of defeat.”
“Later when we became friends she told me that being a viper was lucrative.”
“It was an effort formulating this summary, explaining myself. I preferred the distant past, centuries that were over and done with, ghosts that posed no direct threat. History could be milked for this cause or that. We observed it always with hindsight, projecting onto it our modern convictions and anxieties.”
“I'm researching the types of weapons used in jihad. My thesis is that they reflect the technology of their time and are often the same as those used by the enemy.' I chewed on my toast. 'Well, that makes sense.' 'But it violates some of the Sharia's rules, rules which have been conveniently forgotten. Such as not using fire because it is only Allah's prerogative to burn sinners in Hell. No human being should use fire on another human being.”
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Book Keywords:
hate, tolerance, wisdom, anxieties, multicultural, escapism, love, conviction-and-attitude, sufism, self-hatred, empathy, families, mixed-marriage, compassion, heritage, cross-cultural-understanding, cultural-conditioning, mixed-races, life-lessons, kindness, history, forgiveness
