“We fall. All casualties of the war, Because we cannot hear each other speak,Because eyes have ceased to see the face from the crowd.”

“And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have both won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”

“Ultimately,we hear things because we cannot see everything.”

“Once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. But there is all this time inbetween when the vessel cracks open and we finally fall apart. And its only in that time that we can really see one another, because we see out of ourselves, through the cracks, and into theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other.”

“We can speak of war as vehemently as some others do, but because we believe otherwise as Muslims, we prefer to speak of peace.”

“People have faces. […] Spirits don’t have faces. And yet we recognise them. We know who is who. Spirits don’t have eyes or mouths or ears either. And yet they can see and speak and hear. […] The spirits are all around us. […] They’re right here, but we can’t see them.”