Mohammad Zakerzadeh > Recent Status Updates

On est seuls, donc, comme les Tunisiens d’Essebsi, sans amis ni argent. Personne ne veut notre liberté, personne ne trouve son intérêt dans notre démocratie, personne ne nous aide et il y a des gens à nous qui sont contre nous.

"Consider that our major satisfaction for thousand of years came in the form of food and water and something else more private."

Cela ressemble au rêve le plus secret du régime algérien : le pays n’est vivable que lorsqu’il se vide.

I like reading Kamel Daoud as I face routinely the postcolonial ideas and north African-related discussions in France and I like to see his viewpoint on them. But honestly, I found his analysis so shallow and his narratives far from reality.
Just read his analysis on 2010 about Qatar and its success in hosting the World Cup. I bet Daoud prefers to tear his analysis apart in 2021!

What makes "nontheorizing" cost you so much more energy than
"theorizing"? Why is it hard to avoid interpretation?
It is key that brain functions often operate outside our awareness. You interpret pretty much as you perform other activities deemed automatic and outside your control, like breathing.

Les Algériens n’émigrent pas : ils s’enfuient. Les Algériens s’enfuient. Ce n’est plus notre pays mais la villa de quelqu’un qui nous a signifié qu’il ne veut pas de nous, qu’il nous méprise et qu’il ne nous donne à manger que pour mieux nous voir nous rabaisser dans le geste de la mastication.

"Couples make up the townspeople world. If you're not part of a couple, you don't exist and no one will speak to you, you outcast."

Food looks innocent but it is your most political daily encounter.

I keep my metate in a corner of the kitchen. I admire the spare artistry of this tool, as striking as any piece of modern sculpture.
It’s good to be reminded that cities and states, courts and armies, writing and figuring, temples and cathedrals, all depended on those who stood to pound and knelt to grind.

I keep my metate in a corner of the kitchen. I admire the spare artistry of
this tool, as striking as any piece of modern sculpture.
It’s good to be reminded that cities and states, courts and armies, writing and figuring, temples and cathedrals, all depended on those who stood to pound and knelt to grind.

"Maybe she would get a chance soon. Else what the hell good had it all been? It had to be some good if anything made sense. And it was too and it was too and it was tooand it was too. It was some good.
All right! O.K! Some good."

The undertaker had put rouge and lipstick on his face to make him look natural. But he didn’t look natural. He was very dead.

"Almighty Host! Utmost power of the universe! I have done those things which I ought not to have done and left undone those things which I ought to have done.
So this cannot truly be the end."

‘Listen here, white man. It seem to me like you meaning to get me into trouble.’
‘Trouble!’ Jake said rudely. ‘What in the name of Christ do you think you’re in now?’

"Why did he go onward? Why did he not rest here upon the bottom of utmost humiliation and for a while take his content? But he went onward."

"Attention!, he called. "We will save ourselves. But not by prayers of mourning. Not by indolence and strong dink. Not by the pleasures of the body or by ignorance. Not by submission and humbleness. But by pride. By dignity. By becoming hard and strong. We must build strength for our real purpose."

"My friend, did I ever tell you about Mr. Clark Patterson, the gentleman who owns the Sunny Dixie Show?
He's so fat he hasn't seen his privates for twenty years."

"You see, Bartholomew, that's why I got to be like I have blinders on all the time so as not to think backward or sideways. All I can let my mind stay on is going to work every day and fixing three meals here at home and Baby's career."

"Girls were scared a man would come out from somewhere and put his teapot in them like they was married."

"He wanted to go berserk. He wanted to get out and fight violently with someone in a crowded street."

"His head felt very light, as though it were made of thin glass."

Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad, the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.

"In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise."

"Darling, do you realize we're here and out of that bloody place?"
"I do. I really do. I've never realized anything before."

... then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal.