Chaimaa

“Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I will always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self-expression
of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes. In these moments my heart beats faster because I’m conscious of it. I live more
because I live on high. I feel a religious force within me, a species of prayer, a kind of public outcry. But my mind quickly puts me in my place… I remember that I’m on the fourth floor of the Rua dos Douradores; I feel drowsy; I look at my unlovely hand resting on this half-written page and at the cheap cigarette in my left hand, hovering over the fraying blotter. Me in this fourth-floor room, interrogating life!, saying what souls feel!,
writing prose like a genius or a famous author! Me, here, a genius! …”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“in the face of horror, ancient rituals regained their meaning”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“TWO KINDS OF INTELLIGENCE
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what tne teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“إننا كلنا، كلنا بلا استثناء، كل الموجودات، نحنُ والقطط والغزلان، والغزلان التي تستحيل إلى هداهد، نقتحم الدوائر نفسها، جميعنا حُجاج في طريق الحياة نفسه، وكلنا بلا استثناء، علينا أن نُضيع أنفسنا قبل أن نجدها مجددًا”
― حمزة كاشغري, الشاعر والقرصان