Mashael

“As far as he was aware, none of his school friends knew what it was like to come home to a house that was quiet the way his was, where everything was forbidden to them—loud music or talking back, wearing shirts with band logos printed on them. A father who yelled, a mother who looked out the window or spent the day praying and tending her garden. A family that wanted him to change who he was, to become a respectable man who obeyed his father’s every word, and followed every command given by his father’s God. Or what it was like to live with the knowledge that his father would disown him if he found something as harmless as a packet of cigarettes under his mattress. To not have that kind of love. To not even believe in it. But Abbas knew these things.”
― Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

“But maybe it would have been all right, maybe it would have eased the space between Layla and Hadia, if once in a while Layla had also shared how she felt about her daughter: that Hadia was beautiful and thoughtful, that she was a natural leader, that she could do anything she put her mind to, that she was smart in a way that pleased Layla but also frightened her, not knowing what life would be like for a woman like her daughter, or if she would know how to help her navigate it.”
― Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

“I remember passing the tomboy, sitting in her special place of punishment opposite the bully. She was blazing with her deed, as if she had actually been touched by a god. And I thought that this confirmed all my theories: a child in her position is open to any heroic myth I care to use; she is inward with folktales; she would feel the force of any magical or divine intervention.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections: On the Magic of Writing

“If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”
― Rumi