It’s not that translation is a subjective process, exactly. In fact, in a way, it’s highly mathematical. It’s about retaining the feeling, the thing underneath. It’s as if you go underground, and there are all these shapes and colors, and there you see that, oh, died in this language is closest in color and shape, consistency and texture, to passed

“Only cowards run away. I’m strong enough for this.”

What Adam was witnessing were the remnants of a culture where once he was, by law, obeyed and pacified. That kind of “hospitality” was in fact a legacy of his people’s wrongdoing. Or maybe it went further back still; maybe it was this “hospitality” that gave colonizers the impression that they were welcome in the first place, to claim a land and

If you can conceive of it, it’s possible. It’s those of us who can imagine beyond the boundaries who make things happen.”

It’s always been like that, I thought, so much gratitude and admiration when a white person speaks a non-white language and only contempt and indignation for non-white people who don’t speak English. The double standards of language learning.

you could recognize it, I reasoned, if something in you vibrated in attunement to good work, then surely you also contained the capacity to create that kind of work.

sometimes, it’s the cowards who don’t run.”

The truth is, whenever I saw a beautiful painting, or read a great novel, I felt joy, of course, but something in me would also seethe. Jealousy is an ugly thing. Even ambition, particularly in a woman, can be undesirable. But this other feeling—this feeling of a life not fully lived—that was worse, practically unbearable. I felt constantly

Naima hadn’t “manifested” Azeem, she’d manufactured him. She’d created an image in her head and found someone to project it on, someone who, a bit of a blank, a bit of a people pleaser, happily accommodated her fantasies.