Mariam Karim > Quotes

“.... I have come to Paris to solve the enigma of my mother’s life ... For my own sake. I want to breathe the air she breathed, see the places she saw, live perhaps as she lived, so perhaps her death might begin to make sense to me….and I may become closer to her. Her death ,an unnecessary sacrifice. I understand now that it was my father’s fear that led to everything...my dear, lovely Daddy! He lived, grew up in a town that trembled, day after day, with the fear of “the other”. A town politically alive with fear—the fear of those who wish to annihilate you. The Hindus feared the Muslims and the Muslims feared the Hindus. My father is fighting a difficult battle, although he wants to deny the existence of a battle, on the face of it. My mother found it easier, to dismiss it all as absurd, which it is, actually. Fear is the real enemy, it makes Reality Absurd, it can kill you, as it did Rahul. . Murdered by the Absurd”
― Mariam Karim, The Street of Mists

“The power of the unrevealed moves this world ... moves civilizations. Millions of men and women walk this earth carrying within them a million secrets each…powerful secrets, loves, hates, desires, dreams, images, unrevealed. Unuttered, unacknowledged, they knock about us, gathering momentum, until they cause us to engage in the unexpected, sometimes the unwanted…”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“And then, Paris is such a beautiful city, like a jewel, set so carefully. I felt like a ship that wants to cast anchor. To drift for a while, as the past, the present, the future all mingle, and I could just be. And say je suis. I am.”
― Mariam Karim, The Street of Mists

“Every moment is like a mosaic of truths and untruths, of light and shade, of sadness and joy, remorse and pride...but when you take a step you little know which colours will spill over and unfold before you”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“For Fabrice emancipation meant being able to do what pleases you with your body, without morality attached, is what I gathered.”
― Mariam Karim, The Street of Mists

“The world is a natural matriarchy( ..... )No name, nor elaborate family tree, no fancy patriarchal heritage can change that. When we do not understand ourselves, it is because we have not ever made the effort of knowing our mothers.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“What if we deemed Art to precede Life? Considered Art the “Primary Phenomenon?”
The life of a painting, has been seriously underrated….. it contains philosophy, politics, emotion…and aesthetics, and those strange interactive elements we sometimes refer to as inspiration…but the source of these is unknown, for little electrical impulses running over the earth can act upon an artist’s person…and bits of knowledge, bits of perhaps unimportant information get translated upon a canvas…”
― Mariam Karim, The Street of Mists

“My path cannot be one of those defined by men. I must find my own way.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“In the same way most people believe that they are the favourites of the Almighty, and that their interpretation of faith is the only one. Perhaps that is the way human beings bring themselves to survive and do what they must do in the face of the great odds which most of us have to face. Everyone needs to feel special to carry on. What better than to feel special in the eyes of God? But they can only be sure they are special if they can point out someone who is not.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“Nasreen “ My mother always said that religion in the hands of the young is like fragrant potter’s clay in the hands of a monkey.”. “When the lumps fall and harden, they are misshapen forever. Nothing beautiful can come of them.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“The soul has a destiny which is not always in concordance with the destiny of the body. In our dreams we are revealed images of the journeying of the soul. The soul is errant, across Time and Space...while the body is bound by them. Yet, in spite of the body, the soul must complete its journey, stage by stage, image by image. It is the tension between the path of the soul and the path the body must follow, that ages us, destroys us. Could the body and the soul find harmony, we would become immortal.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“One spends years with people, and they remain only shadows... and then someone you may not have known suddenly has clear outlines, is three dimensional, real. So we must travel, travel to seek out the reality of our lives, to complete the journey of the soul. Or die, (...) waiting to travel, perhaps in another life. Nature intended us to be nomads.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“Paris is a timeless city. Or is it a city caught in time? Like a flower in a candle made of glycerine and clear wax…immovable, glowing…and the people, repeating their days, over, over, over again, walking the same boulevards, frequenting the same cafes, haunting the same hotels, traversing the same gardens…”
― Mariam Karim, The Street of Mists

“From the womb of a free spirit can never be born a spirit in bondage.”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat

“Life is Incompleteness itself. Incomplete selves, incomplete relationships. A series of incomplete stories. Stories reincarnated as souls, souls reincarnated as stories. In reeds, in rivers, in hollow trees. Does the dying of Ooga make a completeness? Or the rolling of the head of Babban Hajjam? Or the going away of Nephele, sister of the clouds? Is there no completeness until the drop mingles with the ocean? And the path to the ocean, does every droplet find its way by itself? Is there a best way?”
― Mariam Karim, My Little Boat