Rolf Magedanz

“Whenever someone makes out a guest list, the people not on it become officially uninvited, and that makes them the enemies of the invited. Guest lists are just a way of choosing sides. ”
― E.L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday

“Has racial justice improved? Have we moved on from Reconstruction and Jim Crow? Been lifted by Martin and the Civil Rights Act of 1964? It seems that whenever we take two steps forward, we take a step back . . .”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

“That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.

It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns