Status Updates From The Country of Others

'We all kill one another, he thought, and butterflies will continue to fly.'

'How right they are, she thought, walking up the stairs to her bedroom, how right they are to suspect us and to warn us, because what we're hiding, under our veils and our skirts, is so fiery and glorious that we might betray anything for it.'

'As a teenager he'd got into the habit of walking slowly, head lowered. He knew that his dark skin, his stocky physique, his broad shoulders made him suspicious in the eyes of white people, so he shoved his hands into his armpits like a man who has sworn not to fight.'

'Mourad liked to say that he had enrolled to defend France, this country he knew nothing about but which - he didn't know why - governed his destiny... 'Go to war or go to prison,' they'd said. So Mourad went to war.'

'Selim is learning very quickly. Yesterday was Aicha's seventh birthday. They're my pride and joy. They're my vengeance on all those who humiliated us.'