Leila Aboulela > Quotes

“All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“Allah tests our patience and our fortitude. He tests out strength of faith. be patient and there will endless rewards for you, insha'Allah" - Utaz Badr”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, When Allah loves a people, He tries them.”
― Leila Aboulela , Lyrics Alley

“I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm good. I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become -”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“I am touched by her life, how it moves forward, pulses and springs. There is no fragmentation, nothing stunted or wedged. I circle back, I regress, the past doesn't let go. It might as well be a malfunction, a scene repeating itself, a scratched vinl record, a stutter.”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“This was where she belonged with Nur, right here, here in his songs. Here within the lyrics they were intimate, caught in the rythm of his words, proppelled by the substance of his dreams.
These songs would be their story and these lyrics their home.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“Eid Crescent

I feed on bitterness and satiety never comes.
Today sadness has renewed itself.
Let me narrate the story of two souls,
Whose love was struck by the evil eye,
In a twist which Fate had hidden.
Luck won’t smile and Time will scorch.
Only the stars know what is wrong with me.
I almost sense them craning to wipe my tears away.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“Can I aske forgiveness for someone else, someone whose already dead?

Yes, you can. Of course you can. And you can give charity in their name and you can recite the Qur'an for their sake. All these things will reach them, your prayers will ease the hardship and loneliness of their grave or it will reach them in bright, beautiful gifts. Gifts to unwrap and enjoy and they will know that this gift is from you.”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“This is the enemy, what is irreversible, what has already reached the farthest of places. There is no going back. They can bomb bus-loads of tourists, burn the American flag, but they are not shooting the enemy. It is already with them, inside them, what makes them resentful, defensive, what makes them no longer confident of their vision of the world.”
― Leila Aboulela, The Translator

“But for Soraya, words on a page were seductive, free, inviting everyone, without distinction. She could not help it when she found words written down, taking them in, following them as if they were moving and she was in a trance, tagging along. A book was something to hide, the thick enchantment of it, the shame, almost. When everyone was asleep, she would creep indoors, into stifling, badly lit rooms, with cockroaches clicking, to open a book at a page she had marked and step into its pulsating pool of words.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized? Aunty Eva, Anwar's flatmates. Omar would never know unless I wrote to him. Uncle Saleh was across the world. A few years back, getting pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given my father a heart attack, dealt a blow ti my mother's marriage, and mild, modern Omar, instead of beating me, would called me a slut. And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom.”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“So much darkness made her uneasy. There was definitely a weight pushing down on the world. Misfortune was always hovering close around people’s shoulders. But she would fight it off, and keep fighting with all her might. Otherwise she would be annihilated by this nameless, all-reaching gloom which she couldn’t figure out or map.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“I wanted to be good but I wasn't sure if I was prepared”
― Leila Aboulela

“The blow, inevitable in itself, comes straight from the source without any intermediaries.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“Why do bad things happen? For pedagogical reasons, so that we can experience the power of Allah, catch a glimpse of Hell and fear it, so that we can practice seeking refuge in Him and, when relief comes give thanks to His mercy. Darkness was created so that, like plants, we could yearn and turn to the light.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“What ages you faster, suffering or experience?”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“As if reading his mind, Jamal-al-Din said, 'To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.”
― Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

“In the distant past, Muslim doctors advised nervous people to look up at the sky. Forget the tight earth. Imagine that the sky, all of it, belonged to them alone. Crescent, low moon, more stars than the eyes looking up at them. But the sky was free, without any price, no one I knew spoke of it, no one competed for it. Instead, one by one those who could afford it began to sleep indoors in cool air-conditioned rooms, away from the mosquitoes and the flies...”
― Leila Aboulela

“I must settle for freedom in this modern time”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“Words on a page were seductive, free, inviting everyone, without distinction.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“I like talking to you,' he said, slowly.
'Why?' That was the way to hear nice things. Ask why.”
― Leila Aboulela

“The sweetest things in life were not necessarily what one strove for and grabbed. Instead, many many times the All-Merciful, the All-Generous would give His servants without being petitioned, without waiting to be asked.”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“Money is like grass. It withers. [... ] but our deeds last forever.”
― Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

“Perhaps we half and halfs should always make a choice, one nationality instead of the other, one language instead of the other. We should nourish one identity and starve the other so that it would atrophy and drop off. Then we could relax and become like everyone else, we could snuggle up to the majority and fit in.”
― Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

“One mother could look after twelve children and decades later these twelve adults would fidget and struggle to look after that one mother.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“Loneliness is Europe's malaria," Rae said. "No one can really be immune.”
― Leila Aboulela, The Translator

“Every holiday had a perfect length and then it turned into an indulgence, time sitting heavy on idle hands, the mind free to find fault with life left behind, too much friction between people, familiarity turning to contempt. Every holiday was a threat.”
― Leila Aboulela, Bird Summons

“Fanatics can never draw out the good in people. They will go to war I predict. They will raise armies, invade, and pillage because it is only aggression that will keep their cause alive. Fighting an enemy is always easier than governing human complexity.”
― Leila Aboulela