Borders
« And when I first arrived, I couldn’t assimilate—there’s that word for you, Josie—I couldn't reconcile myself to the notion that I was free to go anywhere. So I set invisible borders that I abided by for a good, long while . I caged myself into this three-square-kilometer area, learning it inside out, every alley and street, all the mews and yards, every shop and pub and church and cemetery, until nothing about it surprised me, until I felt safe.” p31
""“The day I moved beyond my boundaries involved another tenant in the towers.” p33
""“We reached the southern border of the park, my southern border, and I stopped. and then I was on the other side, my heart pounding in my chest and my footsteps weak like I expected the ground to give way beneath me.”p36
“I hold out my hands; I imagine warmth wrapping around my permanently chilly palms and brushing against my face. I try not to think of other fires I’ve stood in front of, fires that dot the dark European landscape like stars in the night sky, beautiful and alive and desperate. »"p71
"“‘screaming today, pop pop pop of gunfire and the scent of scorched earth. Bombs in the clouds that you can hear but cant see Hanging. a nice volunteer on the macedonian border gave us water to clean our eyes. it was cold.” “The river is dirty here full of shit i dont want to go in who will smell me anyways maybe itll keep them away”"p78
"“Tear gas rocks smoke on the tongue guards snap their teeth like wild hungry dogs”p78
"“I camp beside these families. I don’t have a tent, but some NGO-er gave me a tarpaulin, and I string it across some branches… I sleep on the ground under the open sky and fuck it all if some man decides it’s an invitation.”"p86
"“How many months is it? he asks. My husband is just over there, I lie, even as I know the opening of my legs will be required to get out of this." p87
""“It will never happen. I will never reach the end. My life is here, in the ebb and flow of humans pushing and being shoved back across borders, shuttled from detention center to filthy campground to open fields and rocky beaches. This is to be my life. Wake up now, the sweaty man says, pushing harder. You’re no fun. »" p89
""“ Fugitive and exile sound like I’ve done something wrong. You do many wrong things, he says, finishing up and rolling away. Yes, maybe, but fleeing across these European borders is not one of them. Displaced person sounds too much like misplaced person, and though I am lost much of the time, I am not that.”" p89
"“If recall and recollect mean to “call” and “collect” again, does refugee contain within it, hidden and folded in a dead language, the notion of perpetual fleeing? » p90
"« I consider a walk in the park, maybe a foray further out, pushing against those invisible bounds that still sometimes tighten around me. »p112
"“I want to leave for the border tonight, for somewhere safe. I want to crawl back to my childhood, to days that carried within them no pasts and no future. Bubbles of honey-coated peace. I am full to bursting with want.”p150
“At borders all across Europe they asked who we were. The Alis from Homs and the Husseins from Iraq who pretended they (page153) were from Aleppo and the AlKhalafs from Raqga, they would all shout, “Syrian!” before even saying their name. Finally nationality came before ancestry or ethnicity or religion”p152
“I would bite my tongue, and back when I was sometimes talking, I'd say my name first and the border officer would look at me like I was stupid and bark, “Where home?” When I could no longer speak, I'd just thrust my papers in his face. »p153
“the nightmare of nationalism that’s sweeping the world, that has managed with very little effort to cross so many borders. »p154
“She wants me to write of borders, simple pieces with titles like, My Border Memories, My Memories of Borders, All the Borders I’ve Gone Through. »p154
"" So, instead I'll say that most of the camps are bad. The sort of place you wouldn’t want a family pet living in. There is disease and filth and the violence of the desperate. The policemen that patrol are hideous men, capable of more than you would think a human is capable of
"p167"
« “We will not breathe in there.” The smuggler shrugged as though to say this was not his problem, which, of course, it wasn’t. »p200
“She nodded, blowing a stream of cold air past her lips. “Stop breathing so much,” the man at Mahmoud’s head barked. »p201
““I would kill someone for water,” the father of the little girl said, »p204
“They’d stood and stared at the raft and the thirty or so people it held. Thirty or so men and women and children, all as desperate as he was, bobbing in the Aegean. Clutching each other, men on the outside, women and children in the center. It was sagging already. »p204
« “This is what you pay for,” the man replied, shrugging as though to say he didn’t give a shit. He was, like all | smugglers, vicious and insane. »p204
““You don’t like it?” the smuggler asked, pulling a gun from his waistband and cocking it at the young man’s head…the young man did not seem at all afraid. What must a young man have seen to not fear a gun at his forehead. He was not afraid. If anything, he seemed to burn with ire, with dignity, with a fierce unyielding pride…he secured the document bag around his neck, tucking it deep into his shirt, turned and dived into the water. He and his friends swam to Greece. Majaneen. Mahmoud saw him at a camp in Elefsina, and he said they swam the whole way there, and that even for August, the water was fucking cold.”p205
““Ya Allah, ihfithna min al’shar. Innaka raheemun ‘ath-, eem,” the grandmother began to pray, before the husband shushed her.”p206
“she lost control of her bladder. She let out a small sound— the first he’d heard from her—and he sensed the warmth and felt the wetness against his fingers. “It’s all right,” he whispered, sighing as he released his own.”p207
"What is a nation? What are the borders that contain it? Invisible lines in the sand, slicing through forests and plains,(page 225) bisecting mountains, and dividing villages. As though the person just on the other side of the line were so very different from you."p225