Nesmah Mattar

“Perhaps the world is fair and balanced after all; no one gains and no one loses or no one gains and everyone loses equally.”
― Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men

“Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create. Everyone deals with unimaginable pain in their own way, and everyone is entitled to that, without judgment. So the next time you look at someone’s life covetously, remember…you may not want to endure what they are enduring right now, at this moment, whilst they sit so quietly before you, looking like a calm ocean on a sunny day. Remember how vast the ocean’s boundaries are. Whilst somewhere the water is calm, in another place in the very same ocean, there is a colossal storm.”
― Nikita Gill

“There are people out there who do this. They pick up and they leave. Sometimes they were never really there. Other times they are with you, but in their minds they are a thousand miles away. They are taking a walk down an endless road; they are standing in a field of daisies on some unknown cliff; they are floating through space. -The Art of Leaving”
― Shilo Niziolek, Broad River Review

“لماذا تندهشين من الشر؟..أنت تفكرين كالأطفال:تتخيلين الطيبين مبتسمين وبشوشين والأشرار وجوههم قبيحة وحواجبهم غليظة مشعثة..الحياة أكثر تعقيدا من ذلك بكثير،الشر موجود في أطيب الناس وأقربهم إلينا..”
― علاء الأسواني, The Yacoubian Building