10 quotes
But since then, looking for the frontier has become my life’s occupation. Anxiety eats at me whenever I cannot situate the geometric line organizing my powerlessness.”
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
But when your situation is hopeless, all you can do is turn the world upside down, transform it according to your wishes, and create anew.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
She would take him to faraway lands to observe foreign ways, so he could get closer to the strangeness within himself.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful.
The French do not imprison their wives behind walls, my dear mother-in-law,' she would say. 'They let them run wild in the local souk (market), and everyone had fun, and sill the work gets done'"
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
There are many ways to be beautiful. Fighting, swearing, and ignoring tradition could make a women irresistible.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
I asked Mina how would I know on which side I stood. Her answer was quick, short, and very clear - If you can't get out, you are on the powerless side.
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eye of its beholder turn the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.
Sometimes, she said that to be stuck in a harem simply meant that a woman had lost her freedom of movement. Other times, she said that a harem meant misfortune because a woman had to share her husband with many others"
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994)
Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took