Quotes About Connection

No one snaps our composure quite like someone we love.

She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But Laila sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far. She is here, in these walls they've repainted, in the trees they've planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these pillows and books and pencils.

What I really wished I had was a twin, someone who'd cried next to me in the crib, slept beside me, fed from Mother's breast with me. Someone to love helplessly and totally, and in whose face I could always find myself.

He said I would appreciate later the gift he was giving me. He said that if culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.

She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough. For Pari, the children and Eric have always been enough. They always will be.

I welcome you to my home as my son, as the husband of my daughter who is the noor of my eye. Your pain will be our pain, your joy our joy. I hope that you will come to see your Khala and Jamila and me as a second set of parents, and I pray for your and our lovely Soraya jan's happiness. you both have our blessings.

Bazen... bana dünyada sahip olduÄŸum tek ÅŸey senmiÅŸsin gibi geliyor, Leyla.

She suddenly realizes that she may not know how to live without Masooma. She doesn't know if she can. How will she bear the days when Masooma's absence feels like a far heavier burden than her presence ever had? How will she learn to tread around the edges of the big gaping hole where Masooma had once been?

She had this laugh. I swear it's why I married her, Laila, for that laugh! It bulldozed you. You stood no chance against it.

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything- that's how it is between people who are each other's first memories.

But, miraculously, something of her former life remained, her last link to the person she had been before she had become so utterly alone. A part of Tariq still alive inside her, sprouting tiny arms, growing translucent hands.

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything—that's how it is between people who are each other's first memories, people who have fed from the same breast.

Her eyes traced the sleek shape of the table's legs, the sinuous curves of its corners, the gleam of its reflective, dark brown surface. She noticed that every time she breathed out, the surface fogged, and she disappeared from her father's table.

So much had happened since those childhood days, so much that needed to be said. But that first night the enormity of it all stole the words from her. That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left.

Vì c?u, c? ngàn l?n r?i

And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last.

It's a half bridge, really, as only four of its original arches remain. It ends midway across the river. Like it reached, tried to reunite with, the other side and fell short.

She wondered what it would be like to live with him, to see him every day. She pictured herself handing him a towel as he shaved, telling him when he nicked himself.

Blood is a powerful thing, bachem, never forget that.

prayers, Laila knows, are Aziza's way of clinging to Mariam

ella. Pari es sangre de mi sangre. Y no tardaré en conocer a sus hijos y a los hijos de sus hijos, y mi sangre circula también en las venas de todos ellos. No estoy sola.

I remember how when I felt lonely, I would whisper her name— our name—and hold my breath, waiting for an echo, certain that it would come someday.

Hubo muchas razones por las que me desplacé a Hazarajat en 1986 con el objetivo de encontrar a Hassan. La más importante de ellas, que Alá me perdone, era que estaba solo.

There is no accounting for how the mind works. This moment, for instance. Of the thousands and thousands of moments my mother and I shared together through all the years, this is the one that shines the brightest, the one that vibrates with the loudest hum at the back of my mind: my mother looking up at me over her shoulder, her face upside down, all those dazzling points of light shimmering on her skin, her asking did I know how good and strong God had made me.