It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved โ turned this way and that, examined, considered.
Ahdaf SoueifEgypt.mother of civilization, dreaming herself through the centuries. Dreaming us all, her children: those who stay and work for her and complain of her, and those who leave and yearn for her and blame her with bitterness for driving them away.
Ahdaf SoueifBut things move on and by the time you've plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running -panting- to catch up.
Ahdaf SoueifIf people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?
Ahdaf SoueifShe had been wrong to think it wouldn't matter that much to him, yes,He took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted - not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she'd put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .
Ahdaf SoueifThat narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it , caress it , collapse on to it . The white foam knows nothing better than those sands which wait for it , rise to it and suck it in .but what do the waves know of the massed, hot, still sands of the desert just twenty , no , ten feet beyond the scalloped edge ? And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? - Where the water turns a deeper blue.
Ahdaf Soueif