Quotes from Sorayya Khan

It wasn't only our country they occupied, Irene explained to Amir Shah. They occupied our minds.

As much as Sajida once loved him, she thought it unjust that her daughter, forsaken by her father, should have any physical likeness to him at all.

Noor was Sajida's secret. She knew the exact moment her child was conceived. Purple passed slowly, the lowest of clouds, over her eyes. Bathed in such magnificent color, Sajida lay perfectly still. Much later, she would try to relive the exact moment, as if she needed to understand how the fact of her child could have entered her body and mind at the same time. But Sajida would not summon the gentle shade ever again.

He was reminded of what he liked about Irene so much; that she had not written her war away, she claimed it as her own again and again--near the chichra tree in Five Queen's Road and along the cobbled sidewalk opposite a canal in Maastricht and who knows how many more times in the privacy of her own thoughts.

My mother did not look away and she did not pretend.