Shirin

“As I took off the rumpled sheets, the smell of the people who had slept in them would lift up into the air. There was the round, almost sweet sweat smell of a child who had spent a day happily exploring, or the sharper-edged odor of one who'd gone to bed unhappy. With the bigger beds, I came to understand the way the scents of two people could mingle as effortlessly as rainwater, and to recognize the times they stayed apart, the smells resolutely separate. Sometimes there were those unreal perfumes, jumbling and talking too loudly- but underneath them I could always find the person. Sadness, like the dark purple juice of a blackberry. Fear, like the metallic taste of an oncoming storm. Love, which smelled like nothing so much as fresh bread. In an odd way, the game wasn't that different from reading the smells of our island. Scents were always about what was growing and what was dying. What would last through the next season. This was just with people instead of trees or flowers or dirt.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“If there must be a moon, let it be high,
a high moon made in Baghdad, neither Arab, nor Persian,
nor claimed by the goddesses all around us.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“I fight with words, and I use them well.”
― Lauren Blakely, Asking for a Friend

“ويكثر قول الشعر في الحرب لا الهوى..
لأن الهوى لو قيس بالحرب جارح
/
وفي كل حرب ثم حق وباطل..
وفي الحب لا هذا ولا ذاك واضح
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فإن قال لا أهوى فليس بصادق..
وإن قال أهوى أخجلته المذابح
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وفي شعره معنى فصيح وغامض..
وفي صدره قلب مقيم ونازح
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وشعب مقيم في خيام كأنها..
خيال من الشعر القديم يراوح
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فقف عند رسم ما ترحل أهله..
ولكنه رسم لحزنك صالح
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وما ضره هجر العشيرة إنما..
تقاعسها والموت غاد ورائح
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إذا صار خذلان الأحبة دأبنا..
فمن عاش خسران ومن مات رابح
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وإن كان هذا صلحنا وسلامنا..
فأخزى إلهي بعدها من يصالح”
― تميم البرغوثي