Quotes from Tabish Khair

Reason is not a tyrannical God like Allah, or a bloodthirsty demon like Bhowanee; Reason does not speak in my ears but gives me ears to listen with.

Time is such a cheat. The more importance you give it, the less you have of it.

It is in the gap between your imperfections, honestly faced, and your desire for something beyond perfection that you can achieve genius. Perfect pitch, perfect life, perfect love – these are dead-ends.

People who do not understand irony cannot understand fiction.

Urbanity provides us with so many ways to avoid people. Isn't that what distinguishes it from traditional rural life, where the onus, perhaps because it was difficult & rare, was more on greeting people?

can one really believe if there is no freedom to disbelieve? What is the credit in having faith if you allow others and yourself no real choice at all?

For the first time in two or three days, I heard the cry of birds—oh well, it was a crow, but even a crow's croaking sounded wonderful. There still was life. There were birds and the breeze. There were clouds in the blue sky. And we could look at them for a moment, hear them again. You have no idea how beautiful the world looks and sounds in the hours after a battle stops!

Even today, after all that has happened, I keep this scarf wrapped around my hair because of men's interest in me. It is not because of faith any more; I still believe in Allah, don't misunderstand me, but I do not think Allah is a fashion designer. He observes people's hearts, not their clothes.

Bastard was a term of affection between us, as it usually is in the sub-continent between men who share a Catholic missionary-school education.

A Muslim woman opts] out of the glitter of the West because of [her] belief. It takes strength to do so. More strength than Muslim men realize: I wonder if imams would insist on the hijab as much as they do if they had to put it on themselves and cope with the consequences in ordinary life. It takes strength and character.

You read articles about how the Internet has created a lonelier world, with people isolating themselves behind their screens, connecting to a flat keyboard rather than to other people in a park or a party. Yes and no. Yes and no. It depends on who you are, and where. Some of us never had parks or parties to connect in. Some of us never will.

Halide gave [the goat] a name: 'Kaplan'. 'What does it mean?' I asked her. 'Oh, it means tiger in Turkish,' she said, laughing. 'Don't you think it is a ferocious little thing?' Halide would also, when she could, go out and whisper in Turkish to the goat. When I asked her about it, she said, in her sombre manner, 'But of course, animals understand what you say. They just do not speak. Every good farmer knows that.

You have to care for the animal you sacrifice; you have to love it. Why should you offer Allah a sacrifice that means nothing to you?

I wonder now if she noticed the irony of it all: how she had left a world in order to rebel, to fight for what she considered right, and now, now...

Burning a book's like burning a human being. Once yer start burning books, yer end up burning the entire world, every damn human being in it!

violence spreads like a virus by contaminating others. ... Jealousy and suspicion spread like viruses too.

Yes, that is what a claustrophobic world can cause: infections spread faster in confined space.

The careerists win everywhere, believe me! Hassan's fanaticism was a career to him. Killing was his corporate job. The apocalypse was how he planned to corner the market.

I had become convinced that if there was evidence of divinity in anything on earth, it was in life. Without the miracle of life, there was no God.

I say to you, daughter, reconsider your glorious resolve, for surely the role of a woman is to give birth, not to throw bombs.

You know how it happens when sometimes one starts arguing, knowing well that one is in the wrong, and this knowledge just makes one get more vicious and unbending in argument?

Is this what I had come to: the inability to trust even my best friend? If human beings cannot have faith in other human beings, despite all their mutual failures, then can they ever have faith in the Almighty, I wondered.

Yes, there were thousands of women like them. Yes, they were Muslims. No, they did not think Allah would punish them. No, she was not afraid of what Daesh might do. Yes, that is what she would call them—Daesh—whether they liked it or not. Wasn't she afraid of the violence men can do to woman? Yes, she was—where is the woman who isn't—but what sort of man, who takes the name of God, would even speak of such things?

Wasn't she afraid of the violence men can do to woman? Yes, she was—where is the woman who isn't—but what sort of man, who takes the name of God, would even speak of such things?