Ilona

“What I experienced on a small scale was what Iraqi Jews experienced all over Israel: disrespect for our Iraqi provenance; ignorance of our history; disdain for our culture; denigration of our language; and social engineering to make us fit into the new European-Zionist-Israeli mould. There was a dominant Ashkenazi nationalist narrative which contrasted our life as a humiliated minority in exile with the bright present of Jewish freedom and independence in the Promised Land. A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots.”
― Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew - WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE

“There’s a saying in Syria: the tea has to steep. It takes time. You need to have the patience to let the tea leaves become saturated– that’s the only way to achieve perfection.”
― Aeham Ahmad, Le pianiste de Yarmouk

“The ethnic cleansing of Palestine created empty spaces, and these spaces had to be filled by Jews from anywhere they could be found, including Jews from the Middle East, even those who had no desire whatsoever to relocate to Israel. The same colonial institutions that displaced the Palestinians were tasked with absorbing the Jewish migrants from the Arab lands. And the same arrogant, Eurocentric, Orientalist mindset greeted the Jewish newcomers from the East.”
― Avi Shlaim, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew - WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE

“We are afraid of imaginary losses and difficulties that we may never encounter.”
― Kabir Helminski, Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self