“I recognized the poem from Maulana Rumi and felt touched to the depths of my heart when I realized that Pari was committing both of us to God’s care. “I will never abandon you. You are the star that I follow always.” Pari’s eyes misted. “Yes,” she said softly, “you alone of all my servants have truly loved me.” “With all my heart.”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from Equal of the Sun
“I don’t have royal blood,” I told her, “but we two could have been twins. It was as if we swam in the same fluids in our mother ’s womb, so that some of my maleness became hers and some of her femaleness mine. That made us strange in the eyes of the world, which does not care for in-between beings. We have both taken blows because of it. She was protean, as am I. She was fierce and affectionate and smart and unpredictable. That is why I loved her . . . that is why!”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from Equal of the Sun
“But when I allowed
myself to think of her, I remembered the delicacy of her brown body under her orange robe, and I
drew courage from knowing that she had needed nothing to guide her but her determined heart. Had
there ever been a man who could claim to be as fearless? She had never even held the heavy swords
and sharp daggers that gave soldiers their swagger. Khadijeh may have been a slave, but in her heart,
she was a lion-woman.”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from Equal of the Sun
“But when I allowed myself to think of her, I remembered the delicacy of her brown body under her orange robe, and I drew courage from knowing that she had needed nothing to guide her but her determined heart. Had there ever been a man who could claim to be as fearless? She had never even held the heavy swords and sharp daggers that gave soldiers their swagger. Khadijeh may have been a slave, but in her heart, she was a lion-woman.”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from Equal of the Sun
“Shamkhal and Majeed exchanged a glance of excitement and Majeed leapt up, his face glowing with triumph, to repeat what Ibrahim had said to another noble, and then he sped to the other side of the room to make sure the words traveled from man to man.”
― Anita Amirrezvani, quote from Equal of the Sun
“I might not be able to hold my drink or my man, but what I can hold, is a tune. Point me in the right direction and give me a bloody mic.”
― Lindsey Kelk, quote from I Heart New York
“At home I used to walk through emotional wastelands where the lines on craggy faces were so deep that the wind whistled through them. People fell in and out of my life, but it was the places that really mattered. Even now I can feel them tugging at my sleeve and spinning around in my head. All the old stories have it wrong, because it's not the ghost that haunts the house; it's the house that haunts the ghost. I feel lost out here, and everything reminds me that I'm not quite real. In the end it's always home that damns us.”
― Damien Echols, quote from Life After Death
“Another obstacle was the stubbornness of the countries the pipeline had to cross, particularly Syria, all of which were demanding what seemed to be exorbitant transit fees. It was also the time when the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel were aggravating American relations with the Arab countries. But the emergence of a Jewish state, along with the American recognition that followed, threatened more than transit rights for the pipeline. Ibn Saud was as outspoken and adamant against Zionism and Israel as any Arab leader. He said that Jews had been the enemies of Arabs since the seventh century. American support of a Jewish state, he told Truman, would be a death blow to American interests in the Arab world, and should a Jewish state come into existence, the Arabs “will lay siege to it until it dies of famine.” When Ibn Saud paid a visit to Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters in 1947, he praised the oranges he was served but then pointedly asked if they were from Palestine—that is, from a Jewish kibbutz. He was reassured; the oranges were from California. In his opposition to a Jewish state, Ibn Saud held what a British official called a “trump card”: He could punish the United States by canceling the Aramco concession. That possibility greatly alarmed not only the interested companies, but also, of course, the U.S. State and Defense departments. Yet the creation of Israel had its own momentum. In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommended the partition of Palestine, which was accepted by the General Assembly and by the Jewish Agency, but rejected by the Arabs. An Arab “Liberation Army” seized the Galilee and attacked the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Violence gripped Palestine. In 1948, Britain, at wit’s end, gave up its mandate and withdrew its Army and administration, plunging Palestine into anarchy. On May 14, 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the state of Israel. It was recognized almost instantly by the Soviet Union, followed quickly by the United States. The Arab League launched a full-scale attack. The first Arab-Israeli war had begun. A few days after Israel’s proclamation of statehood, James Terry Duce of Aramco passed word to Secretary of State Marshall that Ibn Saud had indicated that “he may be compelled, in certain circumstances, to apply sanctions against the American oil concessions… not because of his desire to do so but because the pressure upon him of Arab public opinion was so great that he could no longer resist it.” A hurriedly done State Department study, however, found that, despite the large reserves, the Middle East, excluding Iran, provided only 6 percent of free world oil supplies and that such a cut in consumption of that oil “could be achieved without substantial hardship to any group of consumers.”
― Daniel Yergin, quote from The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
“Depuis, plus personne ne parle du 27eme battalion. Pourtant, refusant de rejoindre le ciel, les fantômes, les demons nés de cette défaite continuent à errer parmi les buissons, à l'orée de la jungle, sur les rives du ruisseau. On a donné à ce coin de jungle perdu dans les brumes empoisonnées le nom effrayant de "terre des Ames hurlantes". De temps en temps, à l'occasion des cérémonies de l'enfer les morts se rassemblent sur cette langue de terre comme pour la revue des troupes. On peut entendre leurs voix dans le murmure du ruisseau, les plaintes étouffées, lancinantes de la jungle la nuit, les hurlements du vent à travers les gorges des montagnes. On peut les entendre, les comprendre.”
― Bảo Ninh, quote from The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam
“when the only thing he’s heard for the last hour is the snort of a horse and his own toots.”
― Andrew Peterson, quote from On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
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