Displacement Quotes

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The fish,
Even in the fisherman's net,
Still carries,
The smell of the sea.”
― Mourid Barghouti

“Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it’s more forceful than that.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

“You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I’ve seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You’re ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you’re not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don’t know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You’re poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I’m small. It’s what’s in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don’t excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don’t match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You’re dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I’m from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don’t adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you’re better than me. You don’t like me. You don’t have any interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walks around without shoes or electric light. You don’t go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturday night. You get drunk. You don’t like me and you don’t like women. You put your arm around men in bars. You’re rough. I can’t speak to you. You burly burly. You’re just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. You relaxed in your summer stupor. All year. Never fully awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Can’t imagine. Workhorse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tram.”
― Ania Walwicz

“Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements but as to their subjective experiences.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“I was watching
a city taking shape
like raging delusions
from the deposits of migrating
lovely pristine villages.
Grown playing in dusty streets,
I was searching myself
standing on bifurcating streets
between growing houses
in times dangerous even to tread.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“This is a city of those
who turn the pheasant
flying from rhododendron branch
carrying music of life
into crows by consecrating them
to the staples of the temples,
Of those who leave the god
behind in old people’s homes
and search on television after returning home,
Of those who throw human baby into trash container
and suckle dog’s puppies.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Post-apocalyptic world will never unfold like in the movies, the post-apocalyptic world already exists, may be not for you, as you're born on the lucky side of privilege - but that world of drought, flood, famine, plague and persecution already exists - ten steps from the door of the privileged.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“I likewise enjoyed the melancholy nature of the farewell party. I had a seat in history's waiting room: one train had just been shunted to an abandoned platform; the other was due in at any moment and would set off again after a brief halt. Not everyone who alighted from the first train would find a place in the second; many would remain in the waiting room, watching the snack bar close, the heating and lights go off. But as long as the old train was still out there and the new one still on its way, the snack bar was still open and everything was warm and brightly lit. (139-40)”
― Bernhard Schlink, Homecoming

“But when a community comes together to demand more, when we do not let trauma stay obscured but bring it up to the surface and remember it together, we can make sure it is not repeated.”
― Kiku Hughes, Displacement

“me standing there- just standing there- looking around and thinking, God, I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be somewhere else, this is wrong, this is *wrong*.”
― Chloe Gong, The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror

“I knew I could never again be complete in one place. This was what it meant to be exiled and disinherited - to straddle closed borders, never whole anywhere. To remain in one place meant tearing one's limbs from another.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World

“Eu desci aqui, eu pisei na areia desta praia e depois vi os meus pisarem as pedras deste cais. E ainda vejo a massa esquelética que chega em ondas sucessivas. A cada um que chega penso nos tantos que ficaram no caminho.”
― Eliana Alves Cruz, O crime do cais do Valongo

“Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are welcome, but as participant, not head of state. Somos indígenas, somos indomables - you can make us houseless, but never homeless.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Where are you from?"
Wherever I go,
people think I am from somewhere else!
The first question they ask
is that same sad question
that confirms and reminds me of not belonging anywhere:
“Where are you from?”
They are right to ask!
My grandma used to say
that I am from a time and a place that don’t exist anymore…
My friends tell me that I carry my home with me everywhere I go,
therefore, I belong to all times and all places!
As for me, I often wish I weren’t at all!

[Original poem published in Arabic on September 1, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Spices"
The scents of spices are sad
whether at home or in foreign lands ...
At home, they passes through the nose
to give a ray of hope,
a breathing space
that make us forget – albeit for a short while –
all about the chains of religions, gossip,
the absurdity of politics,
and the cruelty of the ruling classes …
At home, spices help us cope with
the heavy weight of the backbreaking
customs and traditions …
You see everyone excited to have a meal
that help them forget about
the hardships, the crises,
and the unsuitability of life at home …
In alienating foreign lands,
The scent of spices awakens everything that was lost,
including the lost lands and homes…
There is something unbearably sad about the image of a woman
Standing in a kitchen filled with scents of spices reminding her
of all that happened,
all that was possible,
all that should never have happened,
and of all the irreplaceable losses …
So many are the societies that have been
completely destroyed,
and of which nothing remains but scents of spices
that add flavor to foods
and marinate the wounds …
Could spices be like old songs?
We love them at home because
they touch wounds we wish we could heal from,
the same old songs break our hearts in foreign lands,
because by then we have finally learned
that exile doesn’t heal wounds,
but rather pushes the knife deeper into them …
And like the alienating foreign lands,
the scents of spices declare
that there is much more
to the story of the wound;
a story that kills if untold,
and doesn’t heal when narrated …

[Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“for Falasteen

the boy i adored at sixteen gifted me his keffiyeh
feeling guilty for living when others were killed
simply for existing i haven’t seen him in sixteen years
but think of him often these days his grandmother’s purse
still carrying keys to their home believing they’d return
in weeks can it even be called a key
if what it unlocked is no longer there?
we’d sneak onto mall rooftops & pretend shooting
only happened with stars! 'we have a duty of memory,'
he said, 'so they’ll kill us all until only the soil
is witness' how could i reply? i sat in my liquid silence
today there are nurseries of martyrs
they bomb babies for they fear enemies
hiding between pacifiers & tiny wrists
bomb hospitals because enemies hide in ICU bedpans
bomb schools because enemies hide in children’s bags
bomb the oldest mosques & churches because enemies
hide in rosary beads & votive candles
they bomb journalists because enemies are hiding
under their PRESS vests & helmets
bomb poets because enemies hide in pages
of peace poems the elderly are bombed
because enemies hide under their canes
the disabled are bombed because they harbour
enemies in their artificial limbs
they raze & burn all the ancient trees
because enemies make bombs from olives
they bomb water treatment plants
because enemies are now water
& so it goes: justification provided
exoneration granted business as usual
& the boy I adored has green-grey eyes
the colour of fig leaves
we don’t speak but i wish to tell him
'i’m sorry the world is a blade i’m sorry
home is blood & bones i’m sorry music
is sirens & wails i’m sorry night is infinite'
but the boy I adored has grey-green eyes
the colour of forgotten ash”
― Kamand Kojouri

“The Involuntary Princeling by Stewart Stafford

The candle's blaze grows distant fast,
Quenched to an ember spark, unseen,
Carriage taken in larceny's grasp,
Darkness made far bank unclean.

Daubing a sovereign slogan,
In violet shadows unmasked,
A delinquent reunion reprieved,
A doggerel name outcast.

Trade winds howl to storming,
As fireballs 'neath seas seek to atone,
The red-crowned crest now stakes its claim,
On writhed Rosetta's key stone.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Nós, na verdade, não éramos de lugar algum. Nosso lar era o coração um do outro.”
― Eliana Alves Cruz, O crime do cais do Valongo

“کچھ تو فرق ہوتا ہے

نہیں جانے میں، اور لوٹ کر آنے میں۔

،نظارے چاہے وہی ہوں

پر فرق آ جاتا ہے اُن کے نظر آنے میں۔


مِل جاتے ہیں کچھ پہیلِیوں کے جواب،

کچھ سوال بھی نئے ڈھونڈ لیتے ہیں ہم نئے ٹھِکانوں میں

، روح میں اُتر جاتے ہیں کُچھ رِشتے اور بھی زیادہ

کُچھ دم توڑ دیتے ہیں، دور دراز کے بازاروں میں


عجب سے اب لگتے ہیں جان نے والوں کو ہم

کُچھ گِن بھی لیتے ہیں اب ہمیں دیوانوں میں

یہی فرق ہوتا ہے نہیں جانے میں، اور لوٹ کر آنے میں

کُچھ کھو جاتا ہے گُزرے زمانے میں

کُچھ مِل جاتا ہے نئے افسانے میں”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“Netflix and Genocide (Sonnet)

Post-apocalyptic world will
never unfold like in the movies,
the post-apocalyptic world already
exists, may be not for you, as you're
born on the lucky side of privilege -

but that world of drought, flood, famine,
plague and persecution already exists -
the post-apocalyptic world is now,
ten steps from the door of the privileged.

Privilege defines whether
it's a post-apocalyptic world -
step outside the castle,
and apocalypse is everywhere.

Or you just Netflix and chill,
while human communities crumble!
Apes binge-watch the occupation,
deportation and genocide,
aloof from their smart-castle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“Once there was forest, hill, river, and us. We had villages, homes, land, ourselves. In our fields we grew rice, kodo, kutki, soma, we lived. Then there was game to hunt. It rained, peacocks danced, we lived. People grew, community grew, some of us moved to a distance. We asked the earth’s permission, we are setting down stakes to build a roof, settling land to grow crops… We worshipped the tree that was the spirit of our village. The we lived, only us.

… Why did the foreigners come? We were kings. Became subjects. Were subjects, became slaves. Owned nothing, they made us debtors. Alas, they enslaved and bound us. They named us, as bond slaves… Our land vanished like dust before a storm, our fields, our homes, all disappeared.”
― Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps

“We must share our stories. We must believe that we aren’t displaced by war. But placed by destiny.”
― Hagir Elsheikh

“Leaving is a kind of death. You may find yourself with much less than you had before. It seemed to Mauro that in choosing to emigrate, we are the ones trafficking ourselves.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Hand Watches”
I opened the drawer where I store old keepsakes and tokens. My eyes paused on hand watches with dead batteries, frozen in time…

Gifts from teachers and friends— offered to honor my accomplishments, to praise my respect for time.

It never occurred to them, or to me, that Time could die of a heart attack— that it would cease to matter the day my homeland was occupied and destroyed.

The day the plunderers —both foreign and within— colluded to burn and erase all that was beautiful.

Since then, I’ve refused to wear hand watches, and I never will until my people reclaim their Time and dignity.

And when that day comes, Time will no longer matter. For then, I will become— a butterfly, a sparrow, a daffodil or an orange blossom, perhaps an apricot blossom on a branch, an unstoppable stream of water flowing beyond time and timing.

In that same drawer, I found pens that had run dry, like mummified corpses.

In a moment of despair, a lightning bolt of realization struck me— leaving behind a terrifying question:
What if this is a wound that no amount of time can heal— a cause so vast that all the world’s ink cannot write its cure?”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“It never fails to shock me how people take peace for granted.”
― Malala Yousafzai, We Are Displaced

“I imagine this is true for all refugees—the paradox of being grateful for a new life that is based on the painful loss of an old one.”
― Malala Yousafzai, We Are Displaced

“White history sells the West as the free world, but dig into earth history, and you'll realize, West is the biggest threat to life and freedom.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Behren's work resists easy classification. It is part expedition journal, part museum installation, part allegorical theatre. At the centre of the evolving vision stands a deceptively humble object - a brightly coloured toy submarine, discovered on a North Frisian island in 1974. Since then, this modest vessel has become a recurring avatar in his practice: a symbol of human curiosity, displacement, naivety. It drifts through imagined polar landscapes, burrows into archaeological strata, and even interrupts canonical works of European art history with both humour and quiet poignancy.”
― Christina Jansen, 50 Years of Naboland