Quotes from Farida Karodia

My education had equipped me to suffer in silence, a form of passive endurance. Even though I know nothing about being brave, I soon realised that self-denial was like self-immolation. It was a state of stasis that relieved one of the responsibility to change things. [162]

On the way we encountered many other people: families on the move, women wearily limping along behind their men, carrying bundles on their heads and babies strapped on their backs, their children tottering alongside, dragging behind them bags and baskets overflowing with artefacts of their dislocated lives. [256]

It didn't matter which side you were on. It was an empty, cavernous world in which young boys groped around in the dark, dreading the next step, which might be on a landmine or into a booby trap. It was a world of death. No one came out of it unscathed. It was a world with only one law: kill or be killed. [204]

One could only hope that this country, which had always been poor – not through a lack of resources, but because Portugal had decided that this was to be the country's fate- would finally develop to its full potential. I just hope that it would not go the way of other independent black nations, which had allowed their resources to plundered by large foreign multinational companies and leaders hungry for wealth and power. [281]

David had once told me that there was no sky as totally black as the African sky, where the stars hung so low that one could almost reach out to pluck them from the heavens. [270]

I soon realized that self-denial was like self-immolation. It was a state of stasis that relieved one of the responsibility to change things.