Nadia Hashimi Quotes & Sayings

But times change. Everything changes. Birds fly away, one by one. — Nadia Hashimi

Refugees didn't just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they'd put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day. — Nadia Hashimi

Truths can be wholly contradictory, the blackest black and the whitest white at the same time. — Nadia Hashimi

I was pretty sure everyone was praying for different things. I wondered how Allah would sort it all out. — Nadia Hashimi

household. Shekiba slowly — Nadia Hashimi

To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again. — Nadia Hashimi

Do as you must -- you are not a child. But understand that there are many people willing to make your life more difficult. It is up to you to find a way to make things easier for yourself. — Nadia Hashimi

That was her escape, I realized. Where her body couldn't take her, her mind went. — Nadia Hashimi

Life has typhoons. They come and turn everything upside down. But you still have to standup because the next storm may be around the corner. — Nadia Hashimi

A conversation began to take shape between us. A conversation that happened in unspoken words, in false words, in knowing glances. — Nadia Hashimi

There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken. — Nadia Hashimi

People who are beset by tragedy once and twice are sure to grieve again. Fate finds it easier to retrace its treads. — Nadia Hashimi

That is the problem with gifts, Madar-jan. They are always given away. — Nadia Hashimi

We were pressed against each other, a husband and wife bound together not by marriage, but by the harmony of our hearts. Death could not undo us, I'd learned. My hamsar was with me still. He would watch over us, my beloved husband, as we made our way into tomorrow. — Nadia Hashimi

What he wanted to say was that two thousand years of peace could be undone in a month of war. — Nadia Hashimi

But I was afraid. Maybe he would believe me, take my word that the guards had let me go. That Badriya had said it was all right. That I did nothing inappropriate or shameful at the resource center. Impossible. We — Nadia Hashimi

Grudges don't die - people do. — Nadia Hashimi

If you wait to dance on the moon, you may never dance at all. — Nadia Hashimi

Fiction, if done right, can bridge cultural divides. Stories can be a footpath for a reader to step into another land and view its indigenous practices and beliefs through a local lens, instead of a telescope. — Nadia Hashimi

Fate will make things right in the end, though only after the work has been done, the tears have been shed and the sleepless nights have been endured. — Nadia Hashimi

But trying to conjure my mother was like trying to hum a song I'd never heard. — Nadia Hashimi

We are too shortsighted to rejoice in the moments that deserve it. — Nadia Hashimi

Some things are clearer from a distance. — Nadia Hashimi

Poor girl. She ran out from under a leaking roof and sat in the rain. — Nadia Hashimi

The human spirit, you know what they say about the human spirit? Is is harder than a rock and more delicate than a flower petal. — Nadia Hashimi

Ghafoor came from a modest family in a nearby village and had been given to the palace in exchange for a cow. — Nadia Hashimi

The hell with naseeb. Naseeb is what people blame for every thing they can't fix. — Nadia Hashimi

Funny, isn't it? We hear the same name and while they see dark, I see light. — Nadia Hashimi

He did not live in fear of God because, he reasoned, a merciful God would not create us only to punish us for trivial earthly matters. — Nadia Hashimi

He believes that people have destroyed religion and religion has destroyed people. He says he believes in God, but he doesn't believe in people. — Nadia Hashimi

In the darkness, when you cannot see the ground under your feet and when your fingers touch nothing but night, you are not alone. I will stay with you as moonlight stays on water. — Nadia Hashimi

Even righteousness is an ambiguous thing. — Nadia Hashimi

As children inch their way into adolescence, the parent changes. He is an authority, a source of answers, and a chastising voice. Depending on the day, he may be resented, emulated, questioned, or defied.
Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls. Saleem had only bits and pieces of his father, mostly the memories of a young boy. He would spend the rest of his life, he knew, trying to reconstruct his father with the scraps he could recall or gather from his mother. — Nadia Hashimi

It was surprising how many days and years mattered not at all. His story, the heart of him, was really made up of only a handful of seconds or minutes. The rest was empty road, an expanse that only prolonged the travel from one point to another. — Nadia Hashimi

Yes, well, people are very good at destroying things, good things. — Nadia Hashimi

..."there's a special kind of hurt in learning that your parents are not the angels or saviors you wish them to be... — Nadia Hashimi

Why do we keep the Qur'an all the way up there, Madar-jan? It is so hard to reach it there! Because nothing is above the Qur'an. This is how we show our respect for the word of Allah. — Nadia Hashimi

There was nothing but a single breath between them and Naeem. A single devastating moment could return any of them to the dust from which they came. Naeem was close enough to touch and yet irrevocably unreachable. — Nadia Hashimi

Love grows wildest in the gardens of hardship. — Nadia Hashimi

There could be nothing worse than choosing between two children. Ask me to choose between my right arm and my left and I will give you one. But ask me to choose between two of my children and my heart shatters into a thousand pieces. — Nadia Hashimi

We all cross a hundred peaks to get even this far. And there will be more before we each make it to whatever God has fated for us. — Nadia Hashimi

Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls. — Nadia Hashimi

On education - Every bit does some good. I'm lucky I know how to read. It's a candle in a dark room. What I don't know, I can find out for myself. It's easier to fool someone who can't figure things out on his own. — Nadia Hashimi

What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens. — Nadia Hashimi

It felt good to sit around and agree, to have a common enemy and a shared struggle. It felt good to be understood. — Nadia Hashimi

There were things they said out loud to each other, things they whispered with a twitch of the face, and things that were stoically hidden. — Nadia Hashimi

Can a mother commit a greater sin than ignoring her intuitions? — Nadia Hashimi

Some would call that lucky but lucky is relative — Nadia Hashimi

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother's love, a child's smile - a life that's less bitter than sweet. — Nadia Hashimi

Children always forgive their mothers. That's the way God's designed them. He gives them two arms, two legs, and a heart that will cry 'mother' until the day it stops beating. — Nadia Hashimi

Sometimes the storm in a person's mind raged too strongly. — Nadia Hashimi

But her personality made her glow. People looked at her and couldn't help but smile. — Nadia Hashimi

An entire lifetime can change in one afternoon. The rest of the world can continue on, unaware of a quiet, solitary cataclysm occurring a few feet away. — Nadia Hashimi

But war had a taming effect — Nadia Hashimi

Some truths need to be said out loud before they can be believed — Nadia Hashimi

But being without a mother is like being stripped naked and thrown into the snow. — Nadia Hashimi

Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, every crying child we comforted- every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us. — Nadia Hashimi

Children are touched by heaven - their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children — Nadia Hashimi

That's what being a mother is, isn't it? Waiting for a rounded belly to tighten in readiness; listening for the sound of hunger in the moonlit hours; hearing an eager voice call even in the camouflage of traffic, loud music, and whirring machines. It's looking at every door, every phone, and every approaching silhouette and feeling that slight lift, that tickle of opportunity to be again - mother. — Nadia Hashimi

He tried to work alongside his father as a carpenter but a man who had been taught only to destroy found it hard to create. — Nadia Hashimi

Cornered mothers pray for strange things. — Nadia Hashimi

The person most likely to drown in the river is the one who believes he can swim. — Nadia Hashimi

It's best not to depend on the gray haired. We're too close to God to rely on, — Nadia Hashimi

The elderly become invisible sooner than we would hope. — Nadia Hashimi

It's never easy to leave one's home, especially when there are only closed doors ahead of you. — Nadia Hashimi

It's time to undo Rahim. — Nadia Hashimi

The person who doesn't appreciate the apple, doesn't appreciate the orchard. — Nadia Hashimi

When things are rough, people look for an escape. A way out. Sometimes it's hard to find the right way. — Nadia Hashimi