the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.
Dervla MurphyIt is far easier to explain to a three-year-old how babies are made than to explain the processes whereby bread or sugar appear on the table.
Dervla Murphyhatred, however apparently justifiable, excusable or inevitable, always damages the hater.
Dervla MurphyThis is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.
Dervla Murphy