Occidentalism
Orientalism The appartment as laboratory
“I think if she can’t tell by how he looks what a liar he is, then she deserves whatever venereal disease he might give her.”p30
"“When I came here that was the hardest thing to get used to, this reality where everyone is in your personal space all the time. Get on a bus and there’s someone jostling you so they can get off. Walk down the street and people are shouldering past you. Sit down in a park or on a bench and whoever’s next to you will decide they want to have a chat. Never mind that I don’t talk, still they tell me their life story, about the kids they’re on their way to pick up or the doctor they can’t get in to see or the bus that’s never on time." p31
"“The limit does not exist here. I can go where I like—some combination of bus and train and I can be in a whole other country in a few hours. A late-night walk down the block, though not really recommended for women anywhere, is at least not a guarantee of attack. The Juicer can fuck a man without fear. Hasan could stand in the park shouting about God and the Prophet. I could leave the house in a sundress, bare arms and legs shiny in the sun, hair playing in the wind as Gibran intended.”p31
""“she screamed his name. « (her mother when her brother was lost vs the western parents“I looked around again, wondering at his careless parents”" p34
""“The stove was also white because Mama thought that anything white looked more expensive, but she was wrong. »" p38
“In curious twos and confident threes and fours, the white people come. It’s unfair to call them white people, I suppose, since they could have any multitude of heritages, so let’s call them non-Muslims, though even that might be a misnomer since most of us don’t walk around with our religions stamped on our foreheads. » p46
“The hypocrisy is too much for the fathers to stand, and fists rise into the air and shouts grow louder, for how can the subcontinent be British without the UK being subcontinental?” p54
"This notion that their hatred comes from a place of ignorance is one people have a hard time shaking. It’s not a lack of education, and Mr Big Man over there doesn’t care that it’s a peaceful party or that the imam has no plans to convert him or anyone else. It’s fear; fear of the unknown, the Other, fear that things are changing in ways he can’t predict or control. Fear doesn’t waver in the face of facts." p54
“In South Tower A, fourth floor, flat three there lives an old man. Very old,.. He lives alone in that flat. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he is in the process of dying alone in that flat…No one visits, and he visits no one.” p57
" “where is human rights? just tell me where it? Ali X”p78
"“She’s on the floor now, the Dad looming over her, his massive hands around her throat, throttling her.”" p84
"“Helen is screaming now, a shrill wail that fills the sky, and I think he must not be throttling her after all if she has enough air to make that sound. Looking over the edge, I see him straddling her; she’s on her stomach and he’s trying to turn her back around and she’s trying to crawl away »" p85
“He(Hassan) doesn’t like them; I’ve seen the evidence when they come into the shop. The whole family irritates him: the Dad is a prick who never says please or thank you, just drops coins and notes on the counter for his purchases, as though he wouldn't deign to touch Hasan;(p93) Helen scurries here and there around the shop, picking things up and putting them back because she can never decide what to get; Chloe and her friends turn up their noses at his offerings or complain loudly about the smell of spice; Matt and his friends just stalk up and down, knocking items off the shelves and kicking at big sacks of rice until Hasan chases them out with a string of Punjabi words. » p92
"“He(Hassan) lets some of us do what she’s asking. Sometimes I take things, holding them up as I walk out of the door, and I forget about it until he presents me with a tab at the end of the month. He wont offer Chloe such privileges » p93
"““She’s gone to get him.( Chloe’s mother)” Her eyes meet mine, hard and wet. “She’s gone to the station to get him out, and she’s going to bring him back, and I can’t be there when she does. Please.” p93
“ There’s a story in there with a woman who insists it’s better to die by the heat of falling bombs than the chill of silent indignity. Chloe flips through the book, eyes scanning the foreign words and the foreign experiences they attest to, experiences of displacement and exile and pain that she can’t even fathom.”p95
“I wonder if she has any idea of the knowledge that is right there, literally at her fingertips. What do they teach them at school in this country? What do they teach them these days? I feel a desperate urge to stuff a tote full of books for her to take home and read instead of frying her brain on whatever show she’s streaming, the show that flickers off the screen in the darkness of her room. »p96
"“I hate how weak she is.” I don’t say anything, obviously, and she just carries on. I don’t know how she can let him treat her like that. She just sits there and cries. She doesn’t fight or get back at him or anything.” p96
“They’re on the balcony smoking( No lights man and his girlfriend), both in ratty jeans and dirty trainers. Neither looks like they've showered in the last couple of days, hair falling about their faces in oily-looking strings, and it seems to me they wear their dishevelment with pride, like it says for them, we have more important things to worry about than squeaky-clean hair. This lack of hygiene is a luxury for them. »P99
"… I take what I think, what I know, what I learn and hear, and I package them into little one-to-two-page articles. It is exactly what Josie wants, and she could not be more pleased with me. "p109"
“In those days my country was a haven for intellectuals, and there were books everywhere.”p110
“Baba would bring stacks home to me, most of them in English and only a few in Arabic because Mama feared the politics of Arab literature.”p110
"“I sift through the dregs of humanity, those people with nothing better to do than post comments online. Living their nice, pumpkin-spiced lives, thinking the world conforms to their limited understanding of it, they're shocked by the things I say. Left-wing, bleeding-heart liberals who are unable to see that some people are just terrible come at me with their apologies and explanations and extenuating circumstances. » p110
“When you stop speaking, you become a very good listener. I was never much of a talker to begin with, but the things I hear now that I don’t speak would shock anyone. » p122
"“People let their guard down, speak as though a stranger is not present. Or perhaps it’s just that they don’t see me. I’ve heard late-night bus drivers fantasize about murdering their bosses and women in aisles at the shop laugh about the best way to poison their husbands. Once at the train station, a man began to speak, in the crudest terms, of all the things he would like to do to me. I’ve learned to decode sighs and mutterings, to read danger in scoffs and chuckles. I understand hums and haws as though they were entirely spelled out. I hear everything. »p122
"“Democracy is not, nor should it be, the ultimate goal of all modern nations. Democracy rarely works as it should and most often does not work at all. For a democracy to function, you need an informed electorate. In order to get one, you need a free and fair and responsible press. Not even America, the freest nation on earth, has that. How is Egypt supposed to? How is Iraq? How are any of the others? »p126
."There’s a record peeking out from under the coffee table (Adam's house) with the same helmeted GI on its cover and a label that says “Vietnam War Protest Songs,” and I wonder how it is even something like that they've managed to commercialize. » p127
““So this thing in the Middle East. I reckon it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, you know?” he says,.. “Tt’s all about money, you know? The Americans never started a war but they were getting something out of it. All this bollocks about freedom and the rights of people to govern themselves and be(page129) rid of dictators is all just that: a fat fucking load of bollocks. They don’t care about any of that. It’s all about where they can get their money and their oil and sell their tear gas canisters and guns and tanks and medication that you need because they fucking invented the disease! If you went by manufacturer alone, you'd see them wars were just being fought by America. America vs America in a global fight for God-knows-what.”p128
“I desperately want to know what's under his bed. I want to peel apart his layers, like an onion, and lay bare all his bright, brazen whiteness. » p129
““And now instead of it just being Vietnam, we've got loads of little Vietnams scattered all over the place—Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and Yemen and all the others. The Americans are ruining the world, I swear. If they'd just fuck off and mind their own business, everyone'd be a lot better off.” »(Adam) p129
“I’ve been working with this group of organizers, and we're planning a bunch of big marches—here and in London and Manchester and other cities. These big marches to show them that we have a voice and this war stuff is not on. It has to stop. They need to get out of the Middle East and out of Africa’ and leave people alone to deal with their own shit.”(Adam) p130
« Yes, I think, leave the man alone to kill everyone until there's nothing but an empty country to run. »p130
““Yeah, I vote. We all vote. All me mates do. But it’s not enough. Voting will only get you so far, especially when it’s a choice between bad and worse. All politicians are gutless crooks. Everyone knows that. The system is corrupt. You can't play within it. You have to look outside it, wreck it from the outside. Dismantle and topple it.”(Adam)p130
"Kids don't care about voting; they want to make’ their voices heard in other ways—music and books and films and protesting in the street and sit-ins and the like. That’s where the truth is. That's where real life is. Not in the Houses of fucking Parliament.”(Adam)p130
« . .. What happens to you will always be more real than what happened to an Other in some distant or not-so-distant past, across a continent or an ocean away. It’s to be expected. At the end of the day, you can only really see the world through your own eyes. It’s easy to scapegoat them, those undesirable others, when things get rough. Crime rates up? Must be all those black people moving into the neighborhood. Tourism down? It’s those pesky Middle Easterners with their animosity towards bacon and Christmas. No jobs? It’s because of all those Othersswooping in to steal them. P139
"“I find it ironic that this incident is what breaks Josie. Seven or eight dead. In the war at home, some five hundred thousand have died. But I suppose there is a critical threshold after which numbers cease to have any meaning and people stop being “real.” »p147
"They call themselves patriots, but they're not. A patriot is one who loves, a nationalist is one who hates. It is fundamentalism, as abhorrent and destructive as any jihad.”p154
“We are not people first, or perhaps at all, we are citizens first. What does your country owe you? Power? Control? Preference over those who are not of it? Just like religious bigotry or homophobia or racism,it is ALL ABOUT FEAR.Fear of the other, fear of what they might be taking from you, fear of losing status. 155 There is so much fear, it seems the world is blanketed in it.”p155
“(Adam):One day where all these marches go on at the same time? The entire country marching for what’s right?” Marching for what you think is right, my mind supplies, but my mouth obliges with what I hope is an encouraging smile.”p155
« This thing he asks so easily, like I’m just another millennial fervent with zeal, acknowledging the zeitgeist, wanting desperately to be a part of something. I am a part of it. More than he will ever know.”p155
"" About 700 died here, 500 plus there, 100 plus here. Like you’re counting out change or livestock or something. Not people. They aren't people, not to you. They're numbers, guesstimates. And those dots on maps and images on the news, they’re just another war zone. To me, that’s home. It’s my neighborhood. It’s where I went to school. That boy, dead and muddy, is my brother. That man bleeding from the wound in his head is my father. People, all 700 plus of them. »p155
“When I emerge onto the street, the police are still there. No sirens blazing like when they came for Helen, just a lone squad car with a couple of officers on the pavement taking statements. »p162
"Your minds, your bodies, have no frame of reference from which to bring forth empathy."p167
"" | was mocked on arrival, pushed around, poked and prodded, assumed to be some stupid sheep herder begging for scraps off Her Majesty’s table. | try to fit in. Americans call it assimilation" p167
"" We were productive. | don’t want handouts from this country. Refugees are not coming to suck up what’s yours. We want to work, we want to go to school, we want to be full and active members of society. We are not leeches, or parasites, or vermin. We just need a little help. That’s all." p168
“Could she integrate cloudy and heavy and cutting shards into some kind of whole? It was clear that she lived, that all of them here lived,. outside the kind of reality of which I would need to speak. To make her see it, I would have to find new words, new definitions with which to confront her. Impossible. I didn’t know those words. You have to step outside something, for a little while at least, in order to name it. »p172
“Imagine, in the West, there are those who will not eat cheese, who will not drink milk, out of consideration to animals. So much dignity they give them. And us?... Weve been this way for so long,” (Khalid)p188
."When you are a citizen of a nation that values you, even if only a little, where you don’t need to fear it turning on you in some predatory manner, you have the liberty to explore high and existential themes in your writing. For you, a wounded animal can be a metaphor for a wounded psyche and biblical stories can act as a salve binding us to some sacred history that teaches us how we are meant to be with one another." p190
"" | want to tell these writers to look beneath and around the lines of the tales given to them, pay attention to the gaps**,(page 191**) to the lacunae, to the silence, to what is not being said. Could they turn their minds to the questions no one is asking and the answers that remain buried in the caverns of a person’s chest or embroidered on their tongue? That’s where the story is. The Voiceless, The New Press, 5 July 2017 ""
"" Does he feel any remorse for what he’s done? Or is it entirely justified in his head, mere retribution for our invasion of his homeland? Lies, distortion, violence, retribution, lies. . . »p196
« How easy it is for them: some bureaucracy to get a permit, a few weeks of hassle to organize everyone and get the word out, messages whipping back and forth, and then a series of nice little protests. Protests where they can say what they like, shout what they like, insult whomever they want— the PM, the government, the Queen, any of the many powers that (page 216)be. Then they can go home and take a shower and have a nice meal and wrap themselves around their girlfriend or husband or partner and fall asleep, content in the knowledge that they added to humanity in some positive way that day. These are not the protests I’m accustomed to. »p216
““ISIS,” comes a vicious hiss to my right. Matt and his friends are there,.. Matt sneers at me, and hisses again, “ISIS bitch.” “Oi!” Adam barks, coming to a stop. “Shut it.” I pull on his sleeve, trying to get him to keep moving. “It’s what she is,”… “I seen her. At the mosque and the raghead’s shop. She’s one of them.” “What if she is? What’s it got to do with you?” Adam replies »p217
« “They don’t belong here. Coming here to take what's ours.” Adam chuckles, the sound loud and mocking to my ears. “Oh, is that what your daddy’s been feeding you? How about you think for yourself, instead of being a fucking parrot for some brainless sheep?” »p217
“those who are there seem disinclined to help: a mother with her buggy changes direction as though she hasn’t seen anything; a jogger runs past, shaking his head, air puffing from his lips; »p218
"" What does it mean to be American? A red-blooded one, as they’re so fond of saying, and | wonder what color they imagine the rest of the world bleeds. Every year they celebrate the brutal taking of a land that, by any definition of blood and soil, was not theirs, a systematic replacing of the native population. Is that why you fear refugees and immigrants so much? Because you know that with determination, and no small amount of violence, complete and total dominion can be achieved? Speak to me then, not of blut und boden, but of economic strain, of the loss of tourism and the ghettoization of your quaint, cobblestone villages, of pensioners removed from their homes to build more camps. These are conversations we can have. But do not come at me with blood and soil. The soil of my homeland is drenched in the blood of its people, the rivers run red with it. And we can claim nothing. The Voiceless, The New Press, 12 July 2017” p225
“You say Im “one of us” but who is “us?” Do you even know? What _ exactly are you fighting for? How can you even call these ridiculous gestures fighting? You yourself told me that it was mostly just a bunch of idiot university twats who want to feel like they're doing something. »p233
“Your protests do nothing. They are pointless. You're chasing a high you will never reach. Its exciting and you feel important and like you get it but you don’t win in the end. THERE IS NOTHING TO WIN. Moving from issue to issue “cause” to “cause” until its no longer about freedom or equality or human dignity or any other bullshit idea youve convinced yourself of. It becomes about the protest about delusions of anarchy and civil disobedience. It doesn’t work. You dont win because theres nothing to win, no endgame, no goal. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A GOAL »p233
““You came to this country for the same reason I did, I think. For safety, security. This was our big error, you see?”.. “There is no safety. It’s useless to search for it here or there or anywhere.”.. “Your safety will come later. Much later, Allah willing. It will come for you in the afterlife.” » ‘( the Imam to Rana)p279
“An “Army of Tolerance” he called it—and even here, there is the language of conquest—one that is ready and willing to show how pluralistic this country is and that racism and bigotry will not be tolerated. »p286
“All these people, so excited to be doing something in a world they were told was theirs to inherit but which seems to be slipping further and further out of control. »p287