Alaa Al Aswany > Quotes

“If you can't find good in your own country, you won't find it anywhere else.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“The concept of the benevolent dictator, just like the concepts of the noble thief or the honest whore, is no more than a meaningless fantasy.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, On the State of Egypt: A Novelist’s Provocative Reflections

“Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, شيكاجو

“Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, On the State of Egypt: A Novelist’s Provocative Reflections

“A mother loves her children unconditionally. However they wrong her, she'll carry on loving them.”
― Alaa Al Aswany

“Everything that happened to you is a page that's been turned and is done with.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“إننا للأسف في مصر، حيث لا كرامة لمفكِّر جاد أو عالِم نابغ، بينما المَجْد، كل المجد، للأفاقين والأدعياء..”
― Alaa Al Aswany, جمهورية كأن

“كل شىء في مصر كاذب ما عدا الثورة.الثورة وحدها هي الحقيقة ،لذلك يكرهونها لأنها تفضح فسادهم و تفاقهم.مصر هي جمهورية كأن ،و نحن قدمنا إلى المصريين الحقيقة فكرهونا من أعماق قلوبهم”
― Alaa Al Aswany, جمهورية كأن

“...he was one of the great intellectuals of the 1940s who completed
their higher studies in the West and returned to their country to
apply what they had learned there—lock, stock, and barrel—within
Egyptian academia. For people like them, “progress” and “the West”
were virtually synonymous, with all that that entailed by way of positive
and negative behavior. They all had the same reverence for the
great Western values—democracy, freedom, justice, hard work, and
equality. At the same time, they had the same ignorance of the nation’s
heritage and contempt for its customs and traditions, which they considered
shackles pulling us toward Backwardness from which it was
our duty to free ourselves so that the Renaissance could be achieved.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“What led to September 11 is that most decision makers in the White House thought like you. They supported despotic regimes in the Middle East to multiply the profits of oil and arms companies, and armed violence escalated and reached our shores.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, شيكاجو

“I
lived through beautiful times, Busayna. It was a different age. Cairo
was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well
mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly. I was
different too. I had my station in life, my money, all my friends were of
a certain niveau, I had my special places where I would spend the
evening—the Automobile Club, the Club Muhammad Ali, the Gezira
Club. What times! Every night was filled with laughter and parties and
drinking and singing. There were lots of foreigners in Cairo. Most of
the people living downtown were foreigners, until Abd el Nasser threw
them out in 1956.”
“Why did he throw them out?”
“He threw the Jews out first, then the rest of the foreigners got
scared and left. By the way, what’s your opinion of Abd el Nasser?”
“I was born after he died. I don’t know. Some people say he was a
hero and others say he was a criminal.”
“Abd el Nasser was the worst ruler in the whole history of Egypt.
He ruined the country and brought us defeat and poverty. The damage
he did to the Egyptian character will take years to repair. Abd el Nasser
taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunists, and hypocrites.”
“So why do people love him?”
“Who says people love him?”
“Lots of people that I know love him.”
“Anyone who loves Abd el Nasser is either an ignoramus or did
well out of him. The Free Officers were a bunch of kids from the dregs
of society, destitutes and sons of destitutes. Nahhas Basha was a good
man and he cared about the poor. He allowed them to join the Military
College and the result was that they made the coup of 1952. They ruled
Egypt and they robbed it and looted it and made millions. Of course
they have to love Abd el Nasser; he was the boss of their gang.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“A racist is just an ignorant man afraid of people who are different from him.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Automobile Club of Egypt

“If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere
else.”
The words slipped out from Zaki Bey, but he felt that they were ungracious
so he smiled to lessen their impact on Busayna, who had
stood up and was saying bitterly, “You don’t understand because
you’re well-off. When you’ve stood for two hours at the bus stop or
taken three different buses and had to go through hell every day just to
get home, when your house has collapsed and the government has left
you sitting with your children in a tent on the street, when the police
officer has insulted you and beaten you just because you’re on a
minibus at night, when you’ve spent the whole day going around the
shops looking for work and there isn’t any, when you’re a fine sturdy
young man with an education and all you have in your pockets is a
pound, or sometimes nothing at all, then you’ll know why we hate
Egypt.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42”
― Alaa Al Aswany

“I am according to my slave's expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“She represents the beauty of the common people in all its vulgarity and provocativeness.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“Sheikh Bilal had taken
him aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriage
and his wife’s rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothing
for a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not a
virgin and that a Muslim woman’s previous marriage ought not to be a
weak point that her new husband could exploit against her. He said
sarcastically, “The secularists accuse us of puritanism and rigidity,
even while they suffer from innumerable neuroses. You’ll find that if
one of them marries a woman who was previously married, the
thought of her first husband will haunt him and he may treat her
badly, as though punishing her for her legitimate marriage. Islam has
no such complexes.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“إن العدل يفسد الخدم لان من تعود علي الظلم لا يستطيع أن يفهم العدل”
― Alaa Al Aswany

“نعيش في مجتمع متخلِّف كذَّاب يعشق الأوهام، ولست مستعدًّا لدفع ثمن غباء الآخرين.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, جمهورية كأن

“The writer of fiction is not a scholar but an artist impacted emotionally by characters from life, who then strives to present these in his works. These characters present us with human truth but do not necessarily represent social truth.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, نيران صديقة

“He had worked out long ago that police officers evaluated a citizen on the
basis of three factors—his appearance, his occupation, and the way he
spoke; according to this assessment, a citizen in a police station would
either be treated with respect or despised and beaten.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“Nationalities are a facist way of thinking aimed at forcing people into a narrow and stupid sense of belonging. It makes some people feel superior to others and perpetuates hatred and war.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Automobile Club of Egypt

“Later he would ponder the relation between our extreme desire for something and our ability to realize it- was what we wanted inevitably brought about if we wanted it enough?”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“كم تغيرت شيماء!”
― alaa el alswany

“As an Egyptian woman hangs out the wash, she is as alluring as a belly dancer in whose dance the seduction is frank and direct, a sort of invitation to sex. When a woman is hanging out the wash, her appeal is subdued and coy. The woman moves as if unaware of the excitement she arouses in any man watching her. Look. When the woman puts the clothes peg in her mouth and then takes it in her two fingers to peg the wash on the line, the use of the peg is loaded with strong, sensual overtones.”
― Alaa Al Aswany

“Our love of beauty is merely a trick produced by the way we look, and the broader the vision grows the clearer the wrinkles are seen”
― Alaa Al Aswany

“الحرية الوحيدة المسموح بها في مصر حرية الكلام..
أن يكتب كل واحد منا ما يشاء, و بالمقابل تفعل الحكومة بنا ما تشاء.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, لماذا لا يثور المصريون؟

“تفتكر يا أشرف بك ربِّنا يقبل صلاة المسلمين والأقباط مع بعض؟ توقَّف عن السير، وتطلَّع إليها وقال: - صَلاتنا هنا مع بعض أحسن عند ربِّنا من أيّ صلاة يعملها الشيوخ والقساوسة اللِّي بياخذوا تعليمات من ضبَّاط أمن الدولة.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, ‫جمهوريّة كأن‬

“...and that spark will flash in her eyes confirming that her mind never stops working, even in the heat of passion.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building

“...oh that short hair, a la garcon that evokes unfamiliar, boyish kinds of sex.”
― Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building