“Thank you,’ I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in the eyes that… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme. — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity...On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share
Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share
“Baba was gone forever. My mother kept waiting for him until the day she died, just as she waited to return home, just as… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“When I was a child, Haj Salem told me that answers can be found in the sky if you look long and hard enough.” — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.” — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
An instant can crush a brain and change the course of life, the course of history. — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“Yousef had only been gone forty days, but he looked ten years older. His body had become slight, and seeing him like that put… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“Life had collected her pieces and returned her to love’s source. There had been no coincidence.” — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
“Though they lived with the indignities of dispossession and military occupation, Huda sang with an unassailable freedom that comes only to those with unwavering… — Susan Abulhawa Copy Share Image
