Pepitoya

“What's a house when you've lost a country?' she says with a sigh.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“I moved from one part of the city to another as though turning from an Ashkenazi fable to a Bedouin tale, with equal delight, and I didn't need to be a conscientious objector to distrust policies requiring armed struggle and sermons based on hatred. Gazing upon Jerusalem's sacred structures was enough to persuade me to oppose everything that might injure their enduring grandeur. And still today, beneath its surface holiness, the city is like an odalisque longing for her lover, ready to burst into sensuous joy. It frowns unhappily upon the uproar of its citizens, hoping against hope that enlightenment may come and deliver their minds from their dark torment. By turns Olympus and ghetto, muse and concubine, temple and arena, Jerusalem suffers from an inability to inspire poems without inflaming passions. It's crumbing, heavyhearted, breaking up like its prayers amid the blasphemy of guns....”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“The Jew is born as free as the wind, as indomitable as the Judean desert. Why did he mark the boundaries of his homeland so carelessly that it was nearly taken from him? Because for a long time he believed that the Promised Land is, first and foremost, the land where there's no wall to keep him from seeing farther than his cries can carry.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“Every Jew in Palestine is a bit of an Arab, and no Arab in Israel can deny that he's a little Jewish.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack