Jaber Quotes & Sayings

We are all the siblings of Kuwait. She is the mother and the father, and we are the shield that protects her from her enemies — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

He believes that this man has looped a bit of the thread-leash through a corner of his soul. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The building of Kuwait and her Eminence, it's defense and protection, is primarily a responsibility by her people and the efforts of her children — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Too, some of my teachers helped me to navigate those books, showed me the maps and paths and secret decoder rings - people like Linda Kintz and Forest Pyle and Mary Wood and Diana Abu Jaber. They didn't treat me like a messy writer girl in combat boots who had infiltrated the smart people room. They treated me like I deserved to be there, potty mouth and all, they helped make a space for me to rage and ride my own intellect. That's why I'm saying their names out loud. — Lidia Yuknavitch

My brothers, family of our nation, secured Kuwait shall be, and secured you shall all be from every evil and long live Kuwait. And may you all live as her saviors, virtuous sons to her soil, and be her envoys. May she long live, may you long live adhering to her propitious principles, defending her kind and humanitarian lifespan, and her immaculate and tolerant Islamic faith. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Old, like swallowed tears. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart. — Diana Abu-Jaber

It's a big formless, arctic night, the stars so bright they seem to hiss. I walk with my hands in pockets, arms pressed to my sides. Even in my down parka, the cold is still there. I feel as though my blood is crackling in it, my bones conducting cold like wires. My toes are curled in their boots. — Diana Abu-Jaber

When Matussem Ramoud opened his eyes each morning, his wife would still not be there. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes. — Diana Abu-Jaber

But my foster mother never explained to me that there can be a deep loneliness in modern sanity too. That madness can be its own form of solace. — Diana Abu-Jaber

We start from Kuwait, and to Kuwait we end. Anyone but that, is not from Kuwait, and Kuwait is not from them. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Kuwait is the mother and father, Earth and it's supplies. She is the past, present and future. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Kuwait has been a safeguard for who remained inside her, unaffected from the dangers that surround them, loyal to this land, and loving her soil, and believing the justice of her cause.. Also, Kuwait was the hope for the ones outside, where they continued to strive by gathering all the forces for her right, without these two wings, the state would have been another state. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

I'm in my junior year but I can't take it anymore. The beige walls, the scent of linoleum and used lockers, the shrill bell between classes. High school is sucking the life out of me. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait is our haven which God has given us, the home he granted us.. Kuwait is our origins and branches, security and resolution, protection and glory.. The past, present and future. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Here is something you have to understand about stories: They point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way there. Stories are crescent moons; they glimmer in the night sky, but they are most exquisite in their incomplete state. Because people crave the beauty of not-knowing, the excitement of suggestion, and the sweet tragedy of mystery. — Diana Abu-Jaber

To be in the privileged position where I am able to give something back is, for me, perhaps the single most important measure of success. — Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

Marry, don't marry,' Auntie Aya says as we unfold layers of dough to make an apple strudel.
Just don't have your babies unless it's absolutely necessary.'
How do I know if it's necessary?'
She stops and stares ahead, her hands gloved in flour. 'Ask yourself, Do I want a baby or do I want to make a cake? The answer will come to you like bells ringing.' She flickers her fingers in the air by her ear. 'For me, almost always, the answer was cake. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Sometimes when she lies awake her body feels as finely made as a tuning fork. She can hear and smell the most delicate things, the smell and music of thought itself. — Diana Abu-Jaber

If the long arc of history bends toward social justice, it also bends toward environmental justice and ecological sanity. — David Jaber

Love and prayer are intimately related. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The sky is white. — Diana Abu-Jaber

I can't tell you the amount we plan to invest in new acquisitions because that will depend on the opportunities that become available to us. — Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

Kuwait needs tougher guarding. Guarding that's not limited to weapons, soldiers and border control, but extends to every Kuwaiti soul with awareness, vigilance and anticipation — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

She stares at her knife and wishes she were smarter about things. Wishes she knew how to say something wise or consoling to him, something that wouldn't sound frightened or awkward. But then she remembers the time after her parents' death, when people would approach her and try to explain her loss to her; they said things that were supposed to cure her of her sadness, but that had no effect at all. And she knew then, even when she was nine years old, that there was no wise or consoling thing to say. There were certain helpful kinds of silences, and some were better than others. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Everyone should have the freedom and opportunity to shape their own destiny. — Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

Dad says that everyone invented baklava." It occurs to me now to wonder what that means. Aunt Aya rolls her eyes.
"Your father? He is the worst of the worst. He thinks he cooks and eats Arabic food but these walnuts were not grown from Jordanian earth and this butter was not made from Jordanian lambs. He is eating the shadow of a memory. He cooks to remember but the more he eats, the more he forgets. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Every life - regardless of background or gender - has equal value. — Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

You should prize this pain of yours. This is what will make you human all the way through. Nothing less will do that. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The lessons near and far have taught us that our truth is Kuwait, and our involvement with this fact is what created for us, with God's graciousness, our victory set. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Love for Kuwait is always prior to self-love, money, and children.. In the heart of every Kuwaiti, Kuwait's love grew it's seeds, spread its roots and branches all around our good land — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

There's the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. — Diana Abu-Jaber

His expression seems a sort of surrender: the loss of a thing that he has already lost before. — Diana Abu-Jaber

There's a time when things go out of tune. It's not all the time. It's not even a lot of the time. But it is some of the time. And then you have to deal with it all. Everything comes out wrong. You dream about goats and monkeys. People start to look at things wrong. Maybe you think the world looks squashed and flat. Maybe you get stones in the bulgar and you burn the smoked wheat. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky. — Diana Abu-Jaber

What about Danny Thomas?" Uncle Hal asks. "What happened to him?
"Dead," Uncle Abdelhafiz says. "Nice Lebanese boy."
"Never mind about Danny Thomas, look what happened to your whole family! Look at your cousin Farouq, Great Uncle Ziad, Auntie Seena and Jimmy's son Jalal," Aunt Jean cuts in disapprovingly.
"Dead, dead, dead, and in jail. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait will continue to be the final goal, her words will keep being the standing point.. Who works for her, nurtures her rights, protects her , and puts her before himself, will be in God's highest ranks. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [ ... ] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Aunt Rachel removes the knaffea from the oven and places it on its sumptuous tray; the shredded phyllo dough is crisp and brown, crackling with hot, rose-scented syrup. Nestled within, like a naughty secret, is the melting layer of sweet cheese. The pastry is freshly hot, the only way to eat it, really, with its miraculous study in contrasts - the running cheese hidden within crisp, crackling layers of baked phyllo and the distinctive, brocaded complexities of flavors. It's so hot that it steams in your mouth, and at first you eat it with just the tips of your teeth. Then the layers of crisp and sweet and soft intermingle, a series of surprises. It is so rich and dense that you can eat only a little bit, and then it is over and the knaffea is just a pleasant memory - like a lovely dream that you forget a few seconds after you wake. But for a few seconds, you knew you were eating knaffea. — Diana Abu-Jaber

She wonders sometimes if it's a sort of flaw or lack in her - the inability to lose herself in someone else ... she's never quite understood how people could trade in quiet spaces and solitary gardens and courtyards, thoughtful walks and the delicious rhythms of work, for the fearful tumult of falling in love. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Certain barriers do require a critical mass of action at the right time to overcome the inertia that is greater than incremental change. — David Jaber

People look at you and forget about things. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Phantasm, a pink-palmed jinn, a ghost from one of the drowned cities. — Diana Abu-Jaber

You want to protect you children, don't you? You let them out of your body but you never let them all the way out. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait is an origin, and her regulations are branches, so be devoted to the origin, the roots will be insured. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Cold, like swallowed tears. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Kuwait is the origin which our roots extend in it's base. The fort that we seek for shelter and stick to after God Almighty. Kuwait is the entity that maintains our presence that's united in it's features and divisions. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Where there are difficulties, there will always be opportunities. — Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber

He tells about his Sudanese roommate at Georgetown who owned a prayer rug with a compass to find Mecca built right into it. "After a few weeks in America, he rolled it up and used the compass to go camping," Han says. — Diana Abu-Jaber

In passing around the holy aged house (Kaa'bah), and crossing the Safa and Marwa lanes, in prayer inside the Ka'bah, in bowing and prostration, Kuwait was a prayer throbbed in my heart and uttered by my tongue.. Praying for God to protect us from the evils of ourselves and our bad deeds, Praying for God to keep blessing the people of Kuwait with the grace of unity, not to be torn by a difference, and the grace of love not to be destroyed by disputes, and the grace of progress not to be hampered by prejudices. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

If you silence yourself, if you try to be good, if you try to be polite, or toe a party line, you end up paying for that in the long run. You pay for it ... with your homeland, or with your soul, or with your artistic vision. — Diana Abu-Jaber