My Soul to Keep

How else, except through being alone for a while, could you ever discover who you really are? But

Michel, the tight-jawed president of the Black Student Caucus, who called her “little sister” and would have had potential if he’d remembered to sprinkle in some fun between bouts of righteous indignation.

Your strength is the strength of stones. Suddenly,

We only waste energy to have horrible fights with the people we love the most.

If you believe it, Khaldun had said, I could never convince you otherwise. If you do not, nothing I tell you could sway you. I am the one who should be asking you: Is it the truth? No,

When my first wife died long ago, in Ethiopia, I thought I knew grief. But until you have witnessed the death of a loved one to another man’s violence, you know nothing of grief.

My mother used to say to me that she collected sorrows and put them in her pocket. Walking around with them that way, by and by, you just learn to carry them all a bit better, to stand up a bit straighter. That’s all life is, on this earth anyway.

a remark Khaldun had made once, when Dawit returned from the battlefield against the Italians: What do you gain from it, Dawit? Must a scythe prove itself sharper than a blade of grass? Let grass grow as it will. While

They had to work at it, but they found their common ground. Ultimately, though, their differences returned, and she wondered how deeply they ran. How could she continue to overlook them, when they loomed so large? Jessica

Is that your lesson?” she asked him. “I’m sorry to hear that, because you always said just the opposite. Love what you have while you have it, before it’s gone. Isn’t that what you were always trying to tell me?” Her damp eyes glimmered.