From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.

A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.

Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.

Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumor of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.