Somatic encryption (silence and physical withdrawal)
Silence as a coping mechanism Silence as an Occidentalist tool
“work opportunities are scarce when you can’t (or dont, as Dr Thompson insisted) speak.” page 18
"I don’t answer such queries, or I answer them selectively, the way I’m selective with what observations do and don’t go into the pieces I send her.” p18"
“It’s about self-preservation, that most basic of human instincts.”p18
“I don’t speak in dreams either, but I scream. A lot «"p20
"“Sometimes the rain and the wind are the only things that touch me for days. If I’m careful, watching how I hand over bills to Hasan or how I position my palm for him to drop change into, if I angle my shoulders when I pass people on the street or keep three feet of space between myself and others in a line, I can go months without contact. » p31
“I was not and am not equipped for comforting people, least of all a little boy. I wanted to tell him it was okay, But I didn’t say anything, I couldn't say anything. The silence in me, gripping me by the tongue, filled me up and wouldn't let me speak.”"p34
"“Amer and Ossama were impatient with Damascus anyway, with the silence we were all choking on" p64
“This is how we communicate; he hands over books he thinks I’ll like or pushes them across the counter when I go to pay, and I occasionally leave one-line reviews in books I’ve read, which he will then amend or add to as he sees fit. »p70
". She wants me to flay myself, to dig deep, to mine all that I have swallowed. Perhaps even drag Little Ahmed up, muddy water dripping from pale brow... No. »"p75
" White matter appears normal with no sign of SMA impairment. Consequently, a diagnosis of akinetic mutism (AM) was ruled out. After a thorough psychological evaluation (detailed below and in the accompanying documents), the patient was placed on Sertraline, 25 mg/day with a planned increase as per the schedule below. Patient will also undergo Cognitive Processing Therapy.” »" p77
"Patient, though fully conscious, was unresponsive, immobile and mute. For three days, there was a marked reduction of nearly all motor function, including facial expressions and gestures. Such a presentation prompted this clinician to order a second round of diagnostic tests. These results were also negative for any abnormalities.”"p77
"“On the fourth day, the patient exhibited a hysterical mutism characterized by what this clinician has determined is an obstinate and voluntary silence unaccompanied by abnormalities in the muscles of articulation. Patient was able to cough normally and facial expressions returned in the form of glaring and scowling as well as intermittent expressions of confusion and/or shock. Psychiatric evaluation commenced by administering an online Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test. The patient was also allowed to provide written responses to the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test. A sentence-completion test was also administered.”p78
"Basic affective controls are barely intact, and patient relies on a variety of defense mechanisms to contain the underlying failed psychotic process, including intellectualization, compartmentalization and repression. In particular the patient exhibits severe detachment from physical and emotional experience, with at least one recorded episode of psychogenic amnesia.”"p79
" “Patient responses show a preoccupation with sex and anatomy with some evidence of repression of sexual and/or physical trauma. Intellectually, the patient registers at the high average/superior level, writing far above the normal range. Visualspatial reasoning and perceptual-organizational skills are highly developed, though functionality appears somewhat diminished at the present time. Working memory was found to be below average.” p79
"". There is a boulder in my throat, I open my mouth, try to push a word out, a syllable even, but there is nothing but a guttural (p85) sound, like choking." p84
"". I was cold and hot, trembling and flushed, bloated and acidic, and I rocked there for hours, straining to get a word past my lips. When I subsided into tears, I was still quiet. »p91
""“It’s too quiet, but there's nothing I can do about it. To play musiic off the laptop would alert her to the fact that I can hear, and ' that’s not a conversation I’m about to have with anyone.”"p96
"« She shakes her head down at the stained and torn pages, and I realize she’s doing that thing strangers do around me, saying what they want to say because they think I can’t hear them. » p96
"She shouldn't be asking questions about me, my history, my story. It’s not her business. She’s nothing to me, just like I ’m nothing to her. But she’s looking at me in earnest, desperate for an answer, and | can’t think why it would reassure her, or what she hopes to learn, but her eyes won't let me go and I end up nodding in response.”p96
"«They barely look up when I enter, although Helen flinches.. “Don't mind her, dear,” Ruth says with another hard pat against ) her back. “She can’t hear us.” »p113
"“There’s a short piece, a fable called “Silence.” I’ve read it so many times, I’m well on my way to committing it to memory. Amassing Poe collections, I have vintage editions from the 80s and 90s with red and black covers depicting skulls and bloody knives, versions with plain green or black covers, editions with illustrations by Harry Clarke or Rackham or Doré. »p117
"“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
“No one had touched me in months. The need for contact is a human weakness. Go too long without it, and your skin begins to itch and crawl, the desire for it settling hard and sour in your gut. »p144
“Perhaps I am guilty of the same apathy I accuse others of; perhaps my experiences have rendered me unable to devote emotional energy to an attack on so small a scale; perhaps I’ve seen it too much and too often. »p147
“When he finally looks at me, I shake my head. “Do you know anything?” I shake my head to that too. »p164
“I showed the doctor what silence was then. It was a silence so extreme, it seemed, at times, that I was the only person left in the whole world, so complete was my dissociation from everything around me. »p172
“In Allende’s The House of the Spirits, Clara goes mute and feels she is filled with the silence of the whole world. I too felt myself filled completely with silence, but it was not that of the world. You can say many things, but you cannot say that the world is silent. It is noise and chaos. A relentless assault on the senses.. It is bombs and gunfire and babies crying in trees and mothers wailing. and fathers shouting and rushing rivers and howling winds and crunching tires and and and. It is the furthest possible thing from silence. »”p172
“And it seemed to me that the only way to counter this cacophony was to go quiet, to express nothing. The only reasonable response was to fill myself up with silence.”p172
"“He fills the silence with silence—or as many synonyms for it as he can find. He sings to me of the quiet, the mute, the thousand houses and all the dead words residing in their dumb walls. The hush, the eloquence of our silence, and how we must, nevertheless, one day puncture it with screams. »p185
“No one is truly voiceless, he whispered, either they silence ‘ you, or you silence yourself. »(Khalid)p188
"Hiding behind an alias, hoarding specific memories, so that family members scattered around (youd be surprised where you can get a wifi signal) couldn't recognize me…Maybe, at the end of the day, I just wanted to be able to say something.”p228
“Is it right that I should reject it all? The mosque with its hip imam? This shop with its food from home? How much farther do I have to walk for this feeling to leave me? »p243
"I told them, or rather wrote to them, that it was all a’ mistake. I was not a refugee seeking asylum. I'd never been to Syria, let alone grown up there. I told them my name was Mary Lennox, and I was from the north of England.. I spun out this whole story about a beloved uncle waiting for me, a cousin named Colin, and a pet bird called Craven. I told them we were farmers, cheesemongers, milkers of various livestock. I told them my dream was to one day run a bookshop in town and that I had a childhood sweetheart called Dickon who was waiting for me. »p244
“It was a good story, and for a while I felt like I could believe it, that I did believe it. And when Dr Thompson showed me the book, I cried for the first time in months. I wanted to remain Mary Lennox, I wasn’t hurting anyone with it, but she said you can’t live your life in a delusion. It’s easy to be someone else. It’s even easier to be no one at all.”p244
« Maybe they will pull out my heart or freeze the humming or twist my tongue into something that will make a sound. »p254
. They are all in me. I have swallowed them with the silence. I open my mouth, gag, press harder into my stomach, but nothing comes out, not even the bile bulging in my throat. »p254