“It started off as ordinary, a little boy fretting. Abdullah asked only Riham, who’d become Mama, soothing him when he woke from nightmares. She didn’t tell Latif; it never occurred to her there was something bigger, that Abdullah would put… — Hala Alyan Copy Share Image
“The world was addicted to watching; over and over, they were reborn, made whole and silver and resplendent, only to crumple into themselves again.… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“He can feel their eyes upon him. Poor innocent things, he thinks. What is a life? A series of yeses and noes, photographs you… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“It started off as ordinary, a little boy fretting. Abdullah asked only Riham, who’d become Mama, soothing him when he woke from nightmares. She… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“But he loves the mosque for its dusty smell, for the carpet prickling his feet, for the predictable hum of the muezzin more than… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“Atef wants to tell his children that they don’t understand, that their view from the sidelines is incomplete, that somehow in the murky cave… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“Parallel lives, she sometimes thinks. It was a matter of parallel lives, one person having lamb for supper, the other cucumbers. With fate deciding,… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“where your father was from. America wasn’t like that. You became what you coveted.” — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“She feels the anger quiet into a briny resentment. The bitterness floats like an inkblot in her mind’s eye.” — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“She winds her hair into a bun, tilts her long neck back, and parts her lips. It is like watching someone paint the sky.” — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“grandmother’s building. When she was in bed sometimes, her small heart pounding just before she fell into sleep, she felt an endless plummet, as… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“That night, when she saw too late her mistake, all those moments that make love and destroy it. Her younger self, almost a mother,… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“The sea was like another member of the household, a recalcitrant child at times, a soothing aunt at others. She crooned them awake; she… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“America wasn’t like that. You became what you coveted. Memories were short. She met Mexicans, Germans, Libyans, who spoke accented English but responded, From… — Hala Alyan Copy Share
“It was Time, whirling her along, spinning, spinning, until it finally stopped, and she looked around, blinking, and she was thirty-two.” — Hala Alyan Copy Share
