“She soon learned that to survive atrocity is to be made an honorary consul to a republic of pain. There existed unspoken protocols governing how she was expected to suffer. Total breakdown, a failure to grieve graciously, was a violation… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“Katrina hated to see the widows in black. They struck her as relics of their own making, frozen in permanent deference to reckless or foolish or simply unfortunate men who were nonetheless dead and sealed away in the earth forever.… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“Beyond relief and recognition, there is a more complicated thing--an understanding that the machinery of the West has never had much of a capacity… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“Interviewing one of Uber’s earliest executives, who demonstrated the company’s route-finding algorithms with the unbridled enthusiasm of a small child at Christmas, I couldn’t… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“In a 2016 essay, the writer and former soldier Roy Scranton describes watching Star Wars while stationed in Baghdad. He is forced in that… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“All these old men want it to be like it was when they were young. But it'll never be like that again, and they'll… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“It amazed her, the length at which old men could talk. She wondered if it wasn't the sound of his own voice, rather than… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“You have to grow up, Sarat. You’re not a little girl anymore. Look, just try not to give anybody reason to make fun of… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“Your side fought the war, but the war never happened to you. In the Red country the war happened.” — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“She wondered if all boys were like this, their meanness a self defense.” — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“It's not surprising, I don't think, that in the midst of this indiscriminate killing, many of the Westerners doing the most active work in… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“You got the sense from being around them that no war in the history of South Carolina had ever ended, that they were still… — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
“Rage wrapped itself around her like a tourniquet, keeping her alive even as it condemned a part of her to atrophy.” — Omar El Akkad Copy Share Image
