Laurence Silverman

“It was invented, of course, language. The first baby didn’t come out speaking Farsi or Arabic or English or anything. We invented it, this language where one man is called Iraqi and one man is called Iranian and so they kill each other. Where one man is called an officer so he sends other men, with heads and hearts the size of his own, to split their stomachs open over barbed wire. Because of language, this sound stands for this thing, that sound stands for that thing, all these invented sounds strutting around, certain as roosters. It is no wonder we got it so wrong.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!