Hassan Blasim Quotes & Sayings

Migration was not the only unpleasant experience I went though. I was born and lived in a country ruled by a brutal dictator whose wars never ended, and from an early age I was passionate about understanding the world through knowledge. — Hassan Blasim

In art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach us the names of the flowers that grew around us in the city - wild flowers of all kinds and all colors. The math teacher used to whip the kids with his trouser belt. My father was constantly violent toward my mother for the most trivial reasons. — Hassan Blasim

We used to watch executions. I mentioned that in one of my stories. There was a piece of open ground near the area where we lived and we used to play soccer there. That was where they used to hold public executions for soldiers who deserted the army and members of the Kurdish resistance. — Hassan Blasim

The Arab world is full of corruption, in the time of the dictatorships and in the time of anarchy. This corruption is not only in politics and the economy, but also in the field of creative activity. There's an elite that controls the festivals, the newspapers, and the reviews. They are just a corrupt clique with no interest in creativity. — Hassan Blasim

Spilled blood and superstition are the basis of the world. Man is not the only creature who kills for bread, or love, or power, because animals in the jungle do that in various ways, but he is the only creature who kills because of faith. — Hassan Blasim

"Secret migration" across borders is a form of human degradation and evidence of the depravity of the human conscience. — Hassan Blasim

For seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my books, and I wasn't known in the Western world because of my political positions. — Hassan Blasim

Some Iraqi writers are more daring today and have excellent imaginations and their material is rich in human experience. But the Arab prizes, once again, are part of the context of life in the Arab world - anarchy, confusion, and corruption. — Hassan Blasim

You can't understand beauty without peace of mind and you can't get close to the truth without fear. — Hassan Blasim

There's no violence worse than the violence of Iraq. For the last fifty years Iraq has been living a nightmare of violence and terror. It's been a horrible experience and people in Iraq will need a lot of time and work to get over the disastrous effects. But first we have to think about how to stop the violence, so that the bloodshed stops. In spite of everything, on the personal level I don't easily lose hope. — Hassan Blasim

Then he thrust the knife into my stomach and said:
You're shaking. — Hassan Blasim

The people in Arab countries are now speaking out and asking many questions about human rights, minorities, religion, democracy, "the other," and so on. — Hassan Blasim

While I was studying film at the Academy, the problems started. I wasn't a political activist directly in the time of Saddam [Hussein], because the dictator was so cruel and brutal that no one could criticize or complain. I felt futile and empty. The only solution in Iraq was to run away. — Hassan Blasim

I live in a small country in Europe - Finland - and I don't speak English well and I had nothing to do with publishing houses in the West. I lived in complete isolation. — Hassan Blasim

One of the Baathists once told me, "If you're not careful, I'll have you put away," and those words meant death. — Hassan Blasim

I don't recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. She would always be weeping and wailing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tormented. My father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, 'Why good Lord? Why? Take me and save me.' Only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout. — Hassan Blasim

When my stories were translated into other languages and received good reviews in the international press and won prizes, some Arab festivals and newspapers began to take an interest in what I had produced. This sudden Arab interest is a form of hypocrisy and nonsense. — Hassan Blasim

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films. — Hassan Blasim

We in Iraq have not descended from another planet. Just as people in many other countries have gotten over the tragedy of war, Iraq will get over its ordeal. — Hassan Blasim

I believe in dreams more than I believe in God. Dreams get into you and leave, then come back with new fruit, but God is just a vast desert. — Hassan Blasim

The pleasure I found in reading books was disconcerting ... I felt anxious about every new piece of information. I would latch onto one particular detail and start look for references and other versions of it in other writings. I remembered, for example, that for quite some time I tracked down the subject of kissing. I read and read and felt dizzy with the subject, as if I had eaten a psychotropic fruit. — Hassan Blasim

Knowledge and imagination are the life buoy and the extra lung for breathing outside the walls of a tainted reality. — Hassan Blasim

It's ridiculous and painful to use the Arabic of an Iraqi poet who lived centuries ago to describe what we in Iraq are suffering today. — Hassan Blasim

My stories were translated and had many reviews before I had an interview with any international or Arab newspaper. If the stories hadn't succeeded, you wouldn't have asked me my position on Arab festivals and I wouldn't have been interested in the festivals anyway, because I would be in seclusion, writing. — Hassan Blasim

I'm talking about the essence of humanity. Hope is mixed into the blood of every human being, everywhere and in every time. — Hassan Blasim

Losing hope means ceasing to love my son and my girlfriend and many friends and people around the world. — Hassan Blasim

You learn something from the classics but your feelings and your imagination operate in the domain of the colloquial. We need to think seriously about reforming the Arabic that we use today. — Hassan Blasim

I'm not much interested in prizes, whether from the Arab world or from the Western world. Writing is a very difficult process and I want to continue my work. — Hassan Blasim

He sent you a text message that read: FIre Sign - You're compatible with all signs. Your blood group breathes disappointment and happiness. You stick your tongue in the woman's mouth in order to cool down. The fog that burns on the ceiling is the steam of sweat. You buy pins and colored pictures from the shop. You pin them on your flesh when you receive a guest. The firewood comes to you throughout the night, wrapped in nightmares. When you wake up you have a bath on fire. You eat on fire. You read the newspapers on fire. You smoke a cigarette on fire. In the coffee cup you come across prophecies of fire. You laugh on fire. You have your lungs checked at the hospital, and they find a spring of errors that looks like a tumor. You dream of the final act: It goes out. — Hassan Blasim

I've been working on the margins and I was aware of this choice from the start. I buy most of what's written and produced in the Arab world and I don't much like it. — Hassan Blasim

I studied at the Academy during the years of economic sanctions. Life was almost dead because the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the civilized world were so strict. — Hassan Blasim

On more than one occasion I heard how life apparently advances, moves on, sets sail or, at worst, apparently crawls slowly forward. My life, on the other hand, simply exploded like a firecracker in the hand of God, a small flare in his mighty firmament of bombardment. — Hassan Blasim

The question of humanity can be solved only by constant dread. — Hassan Blasim

It's bullshit what that bullshitter says. A story's a story, whether it's beautiful or bullshit. — Hassan Blasim

Whenever we went out to film in the street we would end up in the police station and in the offices of some other security agency. They deliberately intimidated us. I moved to Kurdistan and changed my name and made my first feature film in Kurdistan with very basic resources. — Hassan Blasim

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand. — Hassan Blasim

How can one talk in a classical language about a child who's torn apart in an explosion in the market near his school? People in Iraq don't talk about their joys, their problems, and the destruction of the country in literary diction. — Hassan Blasim

I wanted to reach back to other times I might have lived in, the traces of which are scattered to places I previously thought imaginary. — Hassan Blasim

The dead, Your Honor, do not agonize over their crimes and do not long to be happy, as you know. If from time to time we hear the opposite, then those are just trivial religious and poetical exaggerations and ridiculous rumors, which have nothing to do with the real circumstances of the simple dead. — Hassan Blasim

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house. — Hassan Blasim

The Iran-Iraq war began the same year that I went to primary school, at the age of six. — Hassan Blasim

In fact I didn't think about fear much at the time. I felt angry about everything that was happening around me: the violence of the dictatorship and the violence of society. — Hassan Blasim

I began writing and became attached to writing at an early age. I began by writing poetry and experimenting with dialogues: modest plays, in other words. I also used to describe at great length the way people in the area lived. — Hassan Blasim

All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world. — Hassan Blasim

Every man has both a poetic obligation and a human obligation. — Hassan Blasim

The trail of "secret migration" was a shock to me. I knew a little about the difficulties, just bits of news in the media. — Hassan Blasim