Sudan Quotes

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days...I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive and so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“I had forgotten that, and so many things. How could I put everything down on paper? It seemed impossible. No matter what, the majority of life would be left out of this story, this sliver of a version of the life I'd known. But I tried anyway.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the west to believe.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called 'popular culture' or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant. Some writers try to have this both ways, by making their columns both 'relevant' and 'contemporary' while still manifesting their self-evident superiority. Thus—I paraphrase only slightly—'Even as we all obsess about Paris Hilton, the people of Darfur continue to die.' A pundit like (say) Bob Herbert would be utterly lost if he could not pull off such an apparently pleasing and brilliant 'irony.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“The rigid rifle drill of the British infantryman had been their most potent weapon since the wars against Napoleon. Now it was the turn of the Dervishes to feel the impact of those heavy lead Martini Henry bullets. By now any European army would have staggered and might even have stopped. The Dervishes never paused, but ran forward screaming their war cries and trying to get within killing distance of the steady lines of men before them.”
― Nigel Seed, No Road to Khartoum

“By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. He is no towering oak tree with luxurious branches growing in a land on which Nature has bestowed water and fertility, rather he is like the sayal bushes in the deserts of the Sudan, thick of bark and sharp of thorn, defeating death because they ask so little of life.”
― Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

“But without William K, I would have forgotten that I had not been born on this journey. That I had lived before this.”
― Dave Eggers, What Is the What

“Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens

“So, your friends call you Bastian. Your enemies call you asshole. What do lovers call you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
She smiled up at the stars. “Future reference.”
― Rachel Grant, Catalyst

“And she found her voice. "Thank you," she said, and looked up at him bravely. "Thank you for bringing the water.”
― Linda Sue Park, A Long Walk to Water

“This war has made racists of too many of the and too many of us, and it is the leadership in Khartoum that has stoked this fire, that has brought to the surface, and in some cases created from whole cloth, new hatreds that have bred unprecedented acts of brutality.”
― Dave Eggers

“I’m going to make an exception for you. If you want to study me – every inch of me – I’m willing to be your lab rat.”
“Well, I’d need to have research questions if it’s going to be a valid scientific endeavor.”
― Rachel Grant, Catalyst

“Friends call me Brie. You may call me Ms. Stewart.”
“Stewart? Not Prime?”
She shrugged. “I legally changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name.”
“Like Prime Petroleum changed to Prime Energy a dozen years ago? Obvious and unconvincing greenwashing.”
“I wasn’t greenwashing, I simply no longer wished to be associated with Prime Energy, and the decision to change my last name sent a clear message to Jeffrey Senior.”
― Rachel Grant, Catalyst

“I’m an aid worker. I’ve been helping South Sudanese people who’ve returned to their villages after being displaced by the civil war prepare for the rainy season, which, by all accounts, is going to suck elephant dicks this year.”
― Rachel Grant, Catalyst

“Ten years ago, I attended a community meeting for an oil pipeline proposal PE was ramming through the environmental impact process in eastern Washington. I sat in the front row as you defended PE’s plan to destroy an important Traditional Cultural Property to build a pipeline that would bisect the state from the Canadian border to the Columbia River. You had no respect for the sovereignty of tribes over the land. Your plan lacked even basic environmental protection for air and water, but you defended it because you didn’t give a fuck about air Indians breathe or water Indians drink.”
― Rachel Grant, Catalyst

“I have never been with detachable pieces of ancient Sudan.....! ..... We Have a lot to Do... Respect the will of the people... is inevitable..... Long live Sudan and the people of Sudan!
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لم اكن ابدا مع انفصال قطعة من السودان ..... العريقة! .....امامنا الكثير ليتم ...احترام إرادة الشعوب ...امر حتمي ..... عاشت السودان .... عاشت بلادنا ... وعاش شعبها! ........... هشام نيبر”
― Hesham Nebr

“In the innocence of youth, the world is a canvas for imagination. I didn’t see boundaries, only endless possibilities, even if they lay beyond the horizon”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“The emotional scars of FGM are as deep as the physical ones, serving as a constant reminder of the violation”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“FGM is a cycle of oppression that can only be stopped through education and collective action”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“Wars are not always fought with weapons; sometimes, they are fought with ignorance, hatred, and unconscious bias.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“Refugees are not just escaping trauma; they are seeking opportunities to thrive.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“My journey from Sudan forced me to confront not only the horrors of dictatorship but also the deeply ingrained stereotypes that diminish the humanity of refugees.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Through Tragedy and Triumph: A Life Well Traveled

“They call us forgotten.
Dust in the breeze.
But how do you forget
the roots of the trees?”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Dreamer In Chains: Poems of Exile and Resilience

“We are Kush.
We are Meroë.
But they won’t teach you this in school.
They won’t name the ancient rule,
They won’t tell you how far we reached.
Only how little we’re allowed to teach.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Dreamer In Chains: Poems of Exile and Resilience

“We are not myth.
We are the math and the original path.
They speak of Egypt, forget our kings.
They show you Giza, hide Meroë’s crown.
Where two hundred pyramids
still look down.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Dreamer In Chains: Poems of Exile and Resilience

“I am Sudan. And I do not beg.
I carry warriors in my legs.
I walk like a prophecy. I light like a flame.
I was never small, just wrongly named.
In every land, I stand tall.
You cannot exile what built it all.”
― Hagir Elsheikh, Dreamer In Chains: Poems of Exile and Resilience

“Often, refugees think the worst is over as they arrive at their new homes, only to find new struggles
emerges under a different sun.”
― Hagir Elsheikh