Rita Batta

“دعوا صلاح الدين في ترابه واحترموا سكونه ،،لأنه لو قام حقا بينكم فسوف تقتلونه”
― أحمد مطر

“لستُ أَعمى
لأُبْصِرَ ما تبصرونْ ،
فإنَّ البصيرةَ نورٌ يؤدِّي
إلى عَدَمٍ …. أَو جُنُونْ”
― محمود درويش, جدارية

“I heard you in the other room asking your mother, 'Mama, am I a Palestinian?' When she answered 'Yes' a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, then - silence. Afterwards...I heard you crying. I could not move. There was something bigger than my awareness being born in the other room through your bewildered sobbing. It was as if a blessed scalpel was cutting up your chest and putting there the heart that belongs to you...I was unable to move to see what was happening in the other room. I knew, however, that a distant homeland was being born again: hills, olive groves, dead people, torn banners and folded ones, all cutting their way into a future of flesh and blood and being born in the heart of another child...Do you believe that man grows? No, he is born suddenly - a word, a moment, penetrates his heart to a new throb. One scene can hurl him down from the ceiling of childhood onto the ruggedness of the road.”
― Ghassan Kanafani

“No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.”
― Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science