Nabila Chowdhury’s Reviews > Study for Obedience > Status Update

"and then my breathing would become rapid and shallow and my blood vessels would constrict and I would need to steady myself, and I thought of the desert, which seemed to me an ideal habitat, a habitat so full of nothing, replete with it, a nothing that would settle on one’s shoulders and keep one company."

"Whenever I recalled my own behaviour, I worked to effect in myself a sense of shame and perhaps even of terror, two small bubbles bobbing up against one another inside me, feeding off one another, becoming more active, becoming malignant, feeding off their host, growing prodigiously in size, pressing against my insides, suffocating, suffocating,"

"I tried to take myself in hand, it was not goodness I delivered in those moments, goodness, I reminded myself, did not announce itself, goodness was moderate, it submitted."

"Well into adulthood and even with the best will in the world, I still had not mastered the art of the well-tempered refusal, still I was overcome with fits of magnanimity, which visited me suddenly and at inopportune moments, causing any person who had shown me the slightest kindness to feel a swift sense of regret, my rush of generosity overcame them, it could hardly be matched, no response was possible."

"I said so little and yet it was too much. Much too much. I vowed to make myself smaller and smaller, on numerous occasions throughout my life I had made this same vow,"

"I had observed that nobody ever did seem any better off for my intervention. I felt this had to do with the vagaries of human suffering, and yet at times I wondered what this might say about me, some spiritual poverty of mine, no doubt, a failure of attention, even though it was my attention, or more precisely and usually my presence at the point of a reckless and personal disclosure, that seemed to be the problem."

"I had difficulty for instance understanding my life in terms of the hero’s journey that, according to a documentary I had seen on television in my early teens, characterised the myths and legends that themselves formed the basis of the narratives by which many nations, religions, ethnic groups, tribes, families and even individual people understood themselves."

"As I walked through the woods, at times I thought – perhaps after all not everyone wished me ill. And then I would hear a voice inside me say: No, no. Not likely."

"and yet to his credit he worked hard to maintain a sense of shame in himself, it did not come naturally to him as it did to me, that abiding state of disgrace. In a sense, he had said, patting my hand, affliction simplifies everything."

"My siblings had naturally always supported me in this endeavour, encouraging me to suppress any hint of ambition or even self-love as it arose, my eldest brother in particular had long ago devoted himself to the pursuit of the sacred, which he felt could only be found through the daily mortification of the spirit, mine more often than not,"