maryam > Recent Status Updates

“An outcry in an echo chamber isn’t much of an outcry.”

“ How could principal, an abstract thing floating in the air, wedge itself so solidly between them, and turned Blaine into somebody else? She wished it were an uncivil emotion, a passion like jealousy or betrayal.”

“ She had told Blaine about it later, and there was an impatience in her tone, almost an accusation, as she added, that academics were not intellectual; they were not curious, they built their solid tents of specialized knowledge and stayed securely in them.”

“ he was like a salutary tonic; with him, she could only inhabit a higher level of goodness.”

“‘Removed.’ That word made obinze feel inanimate. A thing to be removed. A thing without breath and mind. A thing.“

The wind blowing across the British aisles was odorous w/fear of asylum-seekers, infecting evrybdy w/the panic of impending doom, & so articles were written & read, simply & stridently, as tho the writers lived in a world in which the present was unconnected to the past, &they had never considered this to be the normal course of history: the influx into Britain of black &brown people from countries created by Britain

“His was the coiled, urgent restlessness of a person who believed that fate had mistakenly allotted him a place below his true destiny.”

“ it puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in childcare?”

“ she was a woman who kept to herself and asked no favors, who would not lie, who would not accept even a Christmas card from her students because it might compromise her, who accounted for every single kobo spent on any committee she was on, and here she was, behaving as the truth telling had become a luxury that they could no longer afford.“

“ There was something in him, lighter than ego, but darker than insecurity, that needed constant, buffing, polishing, waxing.”

“ he was always thinking of what else to do and she told him that it was rare for her, because she had grown up, not doing but being.”

“ his friends were like him, sunny and wealthy people who existed on the glimmering surface of things.”

“How quickly she had become used to their life, her passport filled with Visa stamps, the solicitousness of flight attendants in first class cabins, the feathered bed linen in the hotels they stayed in and the little things she hoarded: jars of preserves from the breakfast tray, little vials of conditioner, woven slippers, even face towels if they were especially soft.”

“Delulu wanted, suddenly, and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave, and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could, therefore in the grace of having given, to be among those who could afford copious, pity and empathy.”

“To take “charity“ for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know – perhaps it came from having had yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this.”

“To be here, living abroad, not knowing when you could go home again, just to watch love become anxiety.“

“ and they themselves marked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.”

“ And as she read, America’s mythology began to take on meaning, America’s tribalism’s – race, ideology, and region – became clear. And she was controlled by her new knowledge.”

“she laughed too although she didn’t fully understand the joke. & she had the sudden sensation of fogginess, of a Milky Web thru which she tried to claw. Her autumn of half blindness had begun, the autumn of puzzlement, of experiences she had knowing there were slippery layers of meaning that alluded her.”

“ Afterwards, they would return to America to fight on the Internet over the mythology of Home, because Home was now a blurred place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of how inconsequential they had become.”

“Ifemelu imagine the writers, Nigerians in bleak houses in America, their lives, dead, and by work, nursing their careful savings throughout the year so that they could visit home in December for a week, when they would arrive bearing suitcases of shoes and clothes and cheap watches, and see, in the eyes of their relatives, brightly burnished images of themselves.

“ and so she began to teach him mathematics – she called it ‘maths’ and he called it ‘math’ and so they agreed not to shorten the word.”

“ at the grocery store, Aunty Uju never bought what she needed; instead she bought what was on sale and made herself need it.“
“‘ put it back,“ aunty Uju said, with the nasal, sliding accent, she put on when she spoke to white Americans, in the presence of white Americans, in the hearing of white Americans. Pooh-reet-back. And with the accent emerged, a new persona, apologetic, and self basing.”

“ she rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, which she would often feel with him: a self affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.” real recognize real. They’re soul mates

“ But his honored English bothered her as she got older, because it was a costume, his shield against insecurity. He was haunted by what he did not have – a postgraduate degree, and upper middle class life – and so his affected words became his armor. She preferred it when he spoke Igbo; it was the only time he seemed unconscious of his own anxieties.”

“Sometimes, like now, he felt like an intruder in his new circle, of people who believed that the latest schools, the latest curriculums, would ensure the wholeness of their children. He did not share their certainties. He spent spent too much time mourning what could have been and questioning what should be.”

A must read, out loud.

“There is something I owe him, though I don’t understand what, and this debt is a gentleman‘s tie around my neck, requiring ballroom manners, that level of care.”

“They think dating is about love, when any New Yorker will tell you that dating is a martial art. It’s basic offense and defense. As with any contact sport, the proximity may coincidentally transform strangers into intimates, but this is not its primary intention. In English, there’s an entire vocabulary for the purpose of analyzing minute tactics and maneuvers…”

Those outside a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of View, and that they can always be more deeply inside.