“I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark, as I would imagine ghosts coming from one direction, thieves from another and serpents from a third. I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room. ”

“Bad dreams are ghosts of our fears and worries, haunting us while we sleep. I doubt Valek is in trouble.”

“Ghosts could walk freely tonight, without fear of the disbelief of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.”

“My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.”

“Sometimes, Soraya Sleeping next to me, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our love-making. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from Soraya and setting between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child. ”

“Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men, Khader said to me once. I wasn't sure if that was true, or if he simply wanted it to be true, but I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.”