Sabrina’s Reviews > Celestial Bodies > Status Update

(2/2) What's this nonsense? ... For some guy who is no different than thousands of other men in this world? ... And you say to me 'love' and patience and sacrifice and if I don't marry him I will kill myself? If I can't talk to him I can't breathe and if I don't see him I can't live? What love, London? ... This is a man? This guy? ... Love, he said. Hah! I swear I thought you had some brains, London.

(1/2) Look here, Hanan said. This romance thing. With all due respect for love wherever it is, to lovers, songs, Nizar Qabbani's poetry, flowers, the moon, nights of conversation, stars, and every poet who has ever existed - this isn't big on rationality. No listening, no looking, no thinking or real planning... And then you say, I'm crazy about him? I can't live without him? He is my air and water, my sun and moon?

Every day and every night, for ten years, she died a little more. She breathed and ate and drank but she was dead. She spoke to people and walked among them, dead. Only much later did her body give up its already-deceased spirit, its dead spirit, no longer forced to pretend, to play at being alive.

"... [You should] feel happy as long as he's happy and sad when he is sad."

"So who feels any sadness when I am sad?" Mayya wondered.