Doaa

“Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. you stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the lobe on the desk... The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. all is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“يارب
ياللي سايبلي الحبل ع الغارب
أنا غرقان بدون قارب
ومعرفتش أعوم وحدي
وكل ما امدلك يدي
وتنشلني
وأعوم شبرين
إديا يفلفصوا الاتنين
وأقولك سيبلي انا الباقي
تسيبلي الحبل ع الغارب
تخش المية حلقي .. اشرق
فاصرخلك .. وأقول بغرق
وأقولك عمري ما حسيبك
فتنشلني
أعوم شبرين
إديا يفلفصوا الاتنين
وأسيب إيدك
وأعيد الكرّه ميت مره
وماتخذلنيش ولا مره
تقوللي حضنهم بره
لا عمره يساع دراع سيدك
ونا لسه
بسيب إيدك !”
― مصطفى إبراهيم, ويسترن يونيون فرع الهرم

“We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad