Amjad Nasser > Quotes

“The flower is here, so let's dance here.”
― Amjad Nasser

“At night it was a different matter. The whole night was his, the night when his cough and his insomnia never failed to start on time, along with the random disconnected images that crossed his mind. No one can stop the machine of memory from working. Nothing has been invented, as far as he knows, that can tame memory, make it work on demand. Even I, with my few exaggerated memories, cannot fend off attacks by the most unpleasant of them.”
― Amjad Nasser, Land of No Rain

“How could a poet less than twenty years old describe how time weighed on his shoulders, how it had left scars on his body, how it made the ground sprout lily after lily and the gazelles give birth to gazelle after gazelle, and the days and nights pass in succession without his love for his beloved diminishing one iota? You told yourself that sometimes one’s words can sing the praises of something you know nothing about or overestimate the permanence of feelings. They can immortalise a moment that soon proves to be transitory, if not pathetic. You also said that it is emotional and intellectual discipline that generally gives words a way out, saves them from the nonsense of their firm promises and makes it possible to read them again with as little disgust as possible.”
― Amjad Nasser, Land of No Rain

“Where are the faces that somehow imprinted their features on your memory for ever, and the faces whose details have been erased and whose ghostly passage across the screen of your memory keeps you awake at night? Where are the smells that mysteriously preserve the images and feelings you secretly treasure? Where are the pavements, the cold, life when it became just a lucky coincidence, the skies as low as a wall of grey, the long sleepless nights, the cough, the stubborn hopes, the dancing lights of return?”
― Amjad Nasser, Land of No Rain

“Do not say it is the appointed time. Do not say it’s preordained. Do not say there is a wisdom that our myopic eyes cannot see. After arriving here I no longer believe that. There is chaos in the ranks of those waiting before the heavenly archive. They do not know why they are here. This is not the time of those horrified children who cling to their mothers’ dresses. For they had time, but someone decided that it should be the time. It was not God. Nor the Angel of death. Do not add to his already heavy load.”
― Amjad Nasser