Bita

“There are a lot of good things about dying. You are suddenly light and free and no longer afraid of death, sickness, judgement or religion; you don't have to grow up fated to replicate the lives of others.

But for the most important advantage of death is knowing something when I want to know it. Kon fayakon. Piece of cake. If I want to be somewhere, I am, just like that.”
― Shokoofeh Azar, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

“Edward Jenner’s discovery of vaccination drew harsh criticism from the pulpit. Clergymen denounced the doctor for having put himself above God. Only the Almighty, they said, sends illness and only the Almighty cures it. Vaccination, critics charged, was “a diabolical operation,” and its inventor was “flying in the face of Providence”
― Albert Marrin, Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

“I looked at the eyes of the ghosts sitting around the fire and at Beeta, and suddenly I realized that we dead are the sorrowful part of life, while the living are the joyful side of death. And yet, Beeta was not joyful and it was the sad side of life that she didn't even know she should be joyful in life because there was nothing else she could do. I wanted to tell her this, but was afraid of bringing her damaged spirit down even further. Fortunately, she herself eventually spoke and said, "It seems that from among you, I am the more fortunate because nobody killed me. But I don't feel happy at all." She looked at we who had died. The dead who had been the first to meet her in the world of the living outside Razan. An old man in the group responded, "This is because you don't yet realize how beautiful, young, and healthy you are." Beeta smiled and her cheeks reddened by the light of the fire in silent emotion; and all of us who were dead saw how good the smile looked on her. But as she recalled dark memories, her smile faded and she said, "But the man who loved me simply turned his back on me and married a young girl." The middle-aged man said, "All the better! It means you were lovable enough but he wasn't smart enough to realize it.”
― Shokoofeh Azar, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

“You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments