Trauma

“I shaved my legs, but it was just a ruse, an excuse to hold the blade at the wrong angle, to take careless swipes at my ankles or the skin behind my knees, to release my breath at the sting of pain" p92

"“Pain is a good distraction. A nick of a razor blade, a lighter too ~ close to the thumb, a stapler to the soft pad of an index finger, a tattoo where the skin is thin and the bone too near the surface.” p92

“They are violent images, carrying that ethereal quality of half-remembrance and half-dream and horrid imaginings that fill the gaps memories and dreams leave behind. I swallow down the panic but my heart is a small, angry bird fluttering in my chest. »p123

“Their happy faces, arms thrown around their sponsors, smile out from newspaper articles and the pages of magazines and social media sites. It wasn't my experience…I wasn’t stable enough for that.” P130

“My panic attacks are strange things. A part of me is certain I’m going to die, but at the same time my brain tells me how absurd such an occurrence would be. I’ve survived overcrowded rafts on freezing waters, impatient smugglers, trigger-happy border patrols, frustrated and hungry men, police officers who say they won't fingerprint me if I just let them do that one thing they've always wanted to do, months of scorching heat and bitter cold and rain, disease and bleeding blisters and infections that never get a chance to heal. I survived all that, so the thought of dropping dead now, due to nothing but the betrayal of my own nervous system, seems highly unlikely.”p143

“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

“I stand, at the counter, squeezing honey into my open mouth. It is one of many tricks I have for when the panic flares, when it climbs up my throat like acid, or lava, or burning bile, to clamp down under my tongue for the rest of the day.(when Adam came to her apartment )”p155

."She was so wrong about the fears; they weren't all the way down there, in that dismal blue. They were on my skin, crawling all over me, all the time, biting, like electric sparks. »p170

“She spoke to me of trauma. She spoke of events, exceptional moments in time, how they shatter identity and fragment the self.. She spoke of identifying the traumatic event, talking it out, and integrating it into the present, that this was how one moved forward and found a new way of being…”p170

“A clear before and after, split with an unwavering line you can label “traumatic event.” How they love their dichotomies. Such pretty little black and white worlds, just like Khalid said. They’re so used to categories and plots that make sense. As though the world were not chaos and void. »p170

« What if there is no before or after? What if you live your life within the long pause of trauma, perpetually astride that line? What if the trauma is a place that time cannot penetrate? »p170

“She spoke of a rape, a mugging or assault, a period of war. All of them singular moments, stand-alone events, bounded in time. What of occupations that have lasted half a century? What of detainment? What of surveillance apparatuses and institutionalized oppression and indefinite states of emergency? Could she trace the form identity took in such cases?”p170

“At times my mind feels like a refugee all on its own, left to wander harsh and hostile landscapes.”p242

“Even when I dream of pleasant things, they are no longer pleasant.”p242

“Mr Big Man and two friends come into the shop, throwing sneering glances at Hasan. My heart kicks up, mind sinking into an old and familiar panic. »p244

“I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. Safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. Safe here. »p247

“Is there any such thing as recovery? When life has been nothing but cumulative, recurring trauma—thirst, hunger, cold, poor, weak, hot, ill, battered, bruised, broken limbs, blood, blood, blood—can recovery ever happen in any meaningful way? »p278