Saadoun Jaber Quotes

The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Mondays are for baklava, which she learned to make by watching her parents. Her mother said that a baklava-maker should have sensitive, supple hands, so she was in charge of opening and unpeeling the paper-thin layers of dough and placing them in a stack in the tray. Her father was in charge of pastry-brushing each layer of dough with a coat of drawn butter. It was systematic yet graceful: her mother carefully unpeeling each layer and placing them in the tray where Sirine's father painted them. It was important to move quickly so that the unbuttered layers didn't dry out and start to fall apart. This was one of the ways that Sirine learned how her parents loved each other- their concerted movements like a dance; they swam together through the round arcs of her mother's arms and her father's tender strokes. Sirine was proud when they let her paint a layer, prouder when she was able to pick up one of the translucent sheets and transport it to the tray- light as raw silk, fragile as a veil.
On Tuesday morning, however, Sirine has overslept. She's late to work and won't have enough time to finish preparing the baklava before starting breakfast. She could skip a day of the desserts and serve the customers ice cream and figs or coconut cookies and butter cake from the Iranian Shusha Bakery two doors down. But the baklava is important- it cheers the students up. They close their eyes when they bite into its crackling layers, all lightness and scent of orange blossoms.
And ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

The building of Kuwait and her Eminence, it's defense and protection, is primarily a responsibility by her people and the efforts of her children ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

I'm in my junior year but I can't take it anymore. The beige walls, the scent of linoleum and used lockers, the shrill bell between classes. High school is sucking the life out of me. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

But my foster mother never explained to me that there can be a deep loneliness in modern sanity too. That madness can be its own form of solace. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Sirine puts a forkful of sweet potatoes into her mouth. The potatoes are soft as velvet, the gravy satiny. It is as if she can taste the life inside all those ingredients: the stem that the cranberries grew on, the earth inside the bread, even the warm blood inside the turkey. It comes back to her, the small secret that was always hers, for years, the only truth she seemed to possess- that food was better than love: surer, truer, more satisfying and enriching. As long as she could lose herself in the rhythms of peeling an onion, she was complete and whole. And as long as she could cook, she would be loved. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait needs tougher guarding. Guarding that's not limited to weapons, soldiers and border control, but extends to every Kuwaiti soul with awareness, vigilance and anticipation ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

If you never speak out, the person looking for you will never find you! ~ Diana Jaber

The flavors are intense in her mouth, the sweet-almondy fruitiness of the pistachios beside the smoky sour taste of the sumac, delicate saffron, and herbal notes of olive. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

If the long arc of history bends toward social justice, it also bends toward environmental justice and ecological sanity. ~ David Jaber

On the cutting board there are two peanut butter and red currant jam sandwiches for Emerson and two Serrano ham, shaved cheddar, and apricot chutney sandwiches for Felice. Nieves wraps them smartly in waxed paper, tapes them, and puts them back in the fridge. There's also a cooler Nieves opens: packed with trail mix, sliced pears and apples, and the lemon bars. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

This morning's pastry poses challenges. To assemble the tiny mosaic disks of chocolate flake and candied ginger, Avis must execute a number of discrete, ritualistic steps: scraping the chocolate with a fine grater, rolling the dough cylinder in large-grain sanding sugar, and assembling the ingredients atop each hand-cut disk of dough in a pointillist collage. Her husband wavers near the counter, watching. "They're like something Marie Antoinette would wear around her neck. When she still had one."
"I thought she was more interested in cake," Avis says, she tilts her narrow shoulders, veers around him to stack dishes in the sink. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

..cold, like swallowed tears. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

She stares at her knife and wishes she were smarter about things. Wishes she knew how to say something wise or consoling to him, something that wouldn't sound frightened or awkward. But then she remembers the time after her parents' death, when people would approach her and try to explain her loss to her; they said things that were supposed to cure her of her sadness, but that had no effect at all. And she knew then, even when she was nine years old, that there was no wise or consoling thing to say. There were certain helpful kinds of silences, and some were better than others. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

There's a time when things go out of tune. It's not all the time. It's not even a lot of the time. But it is some of the time. And then you have to deal with it all. Everything comes out wrong. You dream about goats and monkeys. People start to look at things wrong. Maybe you think the world looks squashed and flat. Maybe you get stones in the bulgar and you burn the smoked wheat. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait is the mother and father, Earth and it's supplies. She is the past, present and future. ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Every life - regardless of background or gender - has equal value. ~ Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

Here is something you have to understand about stories: They point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way there. Stories are crescent moons; they glimmer in the night sky, but they are most exquisite in their incomplete state. Because people crave the beauty of not-knowing, the excitement of suggestion, and the sweet tragedy of mystery. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Too, some of my teachers helped me to navigate those books, showed me the maps and paths and secret decoder rings - people like Linda Kintz and Forest Pyle and Mary Wood and Diana Abu Jaber. They didn't treat me like a messy writer girl in combat boots who had infiltrated the smart people room. They treated me like I deserved to be there, potty mouth and all, they helped make a space for me to rage and ride my own intellect. That's why I'm saying their names out loud. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [ ... ] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

There's the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait is an origin, and her regulations are branches, so be devoted to the origin, the roots will be insured. ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Certain barriers do require a critical mass of action at the right time to overcome the inertia that is greater than incremental change. ~ David Jaber

Kuwait will continue to be the final goal, her words will keep being the standing point.. Who works for her, nurtures her rights, protects her , and puts her before himself, will be in God's highest ranks. ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Love for Kuwait is always prior to self-love, money, and children.. In the heart of every Kuwaiti, Kuwait's love grew it's seeds, spread its roots and branches all around our good land ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Who said you weren't good enough? If it was you then pack up that thought and send it to Mars. If it wasn't you then pack up that thought and send it back to that person. ~ Diana Jaber

Everyone should have the freedom and opportunity to shape their own destiny. ~ Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

His expression seems a sort of surrender: the loss of a thing that he has already lost before. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Phantasm, a pink-palmed jinn, a ghost from one of the drowned cities. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

You want to protect you children, don't you? You let them out of your body but you never let them all the way out. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

The moment feels laden with mystery and tension, as if for one second the world has agreed to pay attention to time itself. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

If you silence yourself, if you try to be good, if you try to be polite, or toe a party line, you end up paying for that in the long run. You pay for it ... with your homeland, or with your soul, or with your artistic vision. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Who am I?" she snaps. "I am America, Israel, England! What am I doing?" She waits another long moment, her eyes shining. "I'm shutting up and listening." She draws the last word out so it hisses through the air. "I am the presidents, the kings, the prime ministers, the highs and the mighties - L-I-S-T-E-N!" She spells the word in the air. "The woman who made the baklava has something to say to you! Voilà! You see? Now what am I doing?" She picks up an imaginary plate, lifts something from it, and takes an invisible bite. Then she closes her eyes and says, "Mmm... That is such delicious Arabic-Jordanian-Lebanese-Palestinian baklawa. Thank you so much for sharing it with us! Please will you come to our home now and have some of our food?" She puts down the plate and brushes imaginary crumbs from her fingers. "So now what did I just do?
"You ate some baklawa?"
She curls her hand as if making a point so essential, it can be held only in the tips of the fingers. "I looked, I tasted, I spoke kindly and truthfully. I invited. You know what else? I keep doing it. I don't stop if it doesn't work on the first or the second or the third try. And like that!" She snaps the apron from the chair into the air, leaving a poof of flour like a wish. "There is your peace. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

I love my family so much that it brings tears to my eyes. ~ Diana Jaber

The sky is white. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

He realizes finally that the boy he's been watching snap his board into the air, then neatly touch down- long, black, gleaming hair, pale white skin- is Felice. He didn't know she'd learned how to skateboard. He's never seen her like this before- so intently focused and content- her beauty beside the point, merely part of the catalog of effects- speed, balance, daring. He admires her athletic form and feels moved in some unexpected way. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Love and prayer are intimately related. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

Where there are difficulties, there will always be opportunities. ~ Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

Sometimes when she lies awake her body feels as finely made as a tuning fork. She can hear and smell the most delicate things, the smell and music of thought itself. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber