Ahmed Saadawi > Quotes

“Anyone who puts on a crown, even if only as an
experiment, will end up looking for a kingdom.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Because I'm made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds - ethnicities, tribes, races and social classes - I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I'm the first true Iraqi citizen, he (the Whatsitsname) thinks.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Each of us has a measure of criminality.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“We try to avoid meeting one another, although we are moving around in search of one another.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“الجميع مسؤولين بطريقة أو بأخرى عن هذا الحادث ... ان كل الحوادث الأمنية والمآسي التي نمر بها لها مصدر واحد هو الخوف. الناس البسطاء على الجسر ماتوا بسبب خوفهم من الموت. كل يوم نموت خوفا من الموت نفسه. المناطق التي آوت القاعدة وقدمت لها الدعم فعلت ذلك بسبب الخوف من المكون الاخر ، والمكون الاخر هذا جنّد نفسه وصنع ميليشيات لحماية نفسه من القاعدة. صنع آلة موت مضادة بسبب الخوف من الاخر. وسنشهد موتاً اكثر واكثر بسبب الخوف. على الحكومة وقوات الاحتلال ان تقضي على الخوف. تلقي القبض عليه ، اذا ارادوا حقاً ان ينتهي مسلسل الموت هذا.
---
انها لا ترى الرب مثلما يراه الأب يوشيّا تمامًا. الرب ليس في الأعالي، لا تراه متسلطًا متجبرًا. إنه صديق قديم من الصعب التخلي عن صداقته.
---
هكذا كان يريد الجميع تذكر الرجل، والموت، كما يرون، يُضفي وقاره على الميت، ويدفع الأحياء للشعور بذنب يستدعي الغفران للموتى.
---
لا فائدة من العدالة لاحقاً، يجب أن تكون هنا أولاً، أما لاحقاً فسيكون الانتقام الرهيب؛ عذاب متصل من الرب العادل، عذاب لا نهاية له على الإطلاق، فهكذا يكون الانتقام. أما العدالة فيجب أن يحسم أمرها هنا على الأرض وتحت أنظار الشهود
---
كل الذين يموتون يومياً يأخذون حذرهم في الغالب”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“What can I say, Mr President? Do your job properly, and I won't tell stories about you.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“I was not a murderer: I had merely plucked the fruit of death before it fell to the ground.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Why did he see other people dying on the news and yet he was still alive?”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“death gives the dead an aura of dignity, so they say, and makes the living feel guilty in a way that compels them to forgive those who are gone.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“المواطن الأنموذجي الذي فشلت الدولة العراقية في إنتاجه منذ أيام فيصل الأول و حتى الإحتلال الأمريكي”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“He believed that emotions changed memories, that when you lost the emotion associated with a particular event, you lost an important part of the event.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“The king ordered that the saint be placed in the olive press until his flesh was torn to pieces and he died. They then threw him out of the city, but the Lord Jesus gathered the pieces together and brought him back to life, and he went back into the city. —The Story of St. George, the Great Martyr”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Death stalked the city like the plague.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“There were serious things happening, and Hadi was merely a conduit, like a simple father or mother who produces a son who is a prophet, a savior, or an evil leader. They didn't exactly create the storm that followed. They were just the channel for something that was more powerful and significant than themselves.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“They all dreamed something about Hasib. Parts of one dream made up for parts missing in another. A little dream filled a gap in a big one, and the threads stitched together to re-create a dream body for Hasib, to go with his soul, which was still hovering over all their heads and seeking the rest it could not find. Where was the body to which it should return in order to take its place among those who live in a state of limbo?”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Every day we're dying from the same fear of dying.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“If she asked Father Josiah, he would tell her to ask for forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun—she never would. If she asked God or Saint George the Martyr or the ghost of her son, they would tell her she didn’t need to ask forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun. She was fully entitled to seek revenge because it would strengthen her faith and give her ailing spirit the energy it needed to keep on living.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Anyone who puts on a crown, even if only as an experiment, will end up looking for a kingdom”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“They're accusing me of committing crimes. but what they don't understand is that I'm the only justice there is in this country”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“If you were to write a story for the magazine, who would believe you?”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“انت تتشبه بهم الان. تجرب ان تكون منهم، ومن يرتدي تاجاً، ولو على سبيل التجربة، سيبحث لاحقاً عن مملكة.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“They're accusing me of committing crimes, but what they don't understand is that I'm the only justice there is in this country”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Not many people came back looking the same as when they left.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Yes, the cards don't matter. What's important are the hands that dealt them.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“Tomorrow the One Who Has No Name, he mused, might become He Who Has No Identity, and then He Who Has No Body, and then He Who Can't Be Caught and Thrown in Jail.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“It's a temporary measure. We'll leave home till things calm down in the capital," he said. He didn't foresee the possibility that never coming back would become a very real option.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“It was a horrible job, one he had done without anyone's help, and somehow it didn't seem to make any sense despite all the arguments he used when trying to explain to his listeners.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“She didn't want to see her house disappear before her eyes but wanted to remember it as it had always been, tidy, clean and smelling of the people who had lived in it and passed through it.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“I'm the only justice there is in this country.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad