Leslie Cockburn > Quotes

“Death was sweetened for the martyrs by the promise of 72 virgins waiting in paradise. She had researched the 72 virgins. The number wasn’t actually in the Quran but in the Hadith 2687, collected in the Book of Sunan. The Quran, in Sura 56, was vague on the point. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls … A new analysis translated houris from the Aramaic dialect Syriac as “white raisins”, which put everything in a very different light.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“You can take me to Petra, and sing for me in the ruins.”
“Insha’Allah.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“Why did you become a journalist?”
“Better than working for a living.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“Mohammed ignored the abuse. What did Ahmed know? It had been years since anyone had studied music in Paris or Seville on a scholarship paid for by the country's oil profits. The only knowledge people mastered these days was how to steal copper wire and load a gun. Mohammed felt like a relic from a lost civilization, buried in the muck of the Tigris. Sassanid, Seleucid, Sumerian. Achaemenid, Assyrian, Akkadian. He sometimes thought he was the only one who remembered. For what it was worth, he could sing the ancient songs of the pearl divers.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“Are you a journalist?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Good. We need doctors, Wallahi.” Sadoon scowled. “Journalists only tell lies and smuggle carpets.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“She had done her residency at LA County Hospital, where the CT machines were so old she had to mark off the body parts for scanning with paper clips. She thought Baghdad hospitals might be like that.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“There are a lot of people missing in Iraq. Just the other day I heard of somebody asking $250,000 ransom for an Egyptian. Can you imagine? An Egyptian. That’s inflation. This war,” he said, leaning closer to her, “is all about money.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“Lee was conscious that Nizar watched her trying to adjust her abaya. She knew everyone could tell a Western woman by her awkwardness and her shoes.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“The lapis lazuli worry beads, draped over his rear view mirror, swung back and forth like the hips of Scheherazade, Mohammed's favorite belly dancer, who refused, in spite of the war, to leave Baghdad.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire

“Yes, I know, I’m only an artist. What would I know about the dark side of Baghdad?”
― Leslie Cockburn, Baghdad Solitaire