Ahmed

“I understand this is just how things are, ethical double-jointedness being a necessary requirement for the daily debasements of modern political life. And yet I still wonder how someone can maintain this particular facade and sleep at night.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“The system does not work for you, was never intended to work for you, but as an act of magnanimity on our part, you may choose the degree to which it works against you.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption in hindsight of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening, while the land is still being stolen, and the natives still being killed, any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight. I tell stories for a living and there’s a thick thread of narrative by well-meaning white Westerners that exalts the native populations in so many parts of the world for standing up to the occupiers. Makes of their narrative a neat, reflexive arc in which it was always understood by the colonized and, this part implied, the descendants of the colonizer, that what happened was wrong.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“They are building the wall," said Nidal, "so they don't have to look into our eyes.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East