Nazruddin Quotes in A Bend in the River
Their obsession was with more than a skin blemish. They had cut themselves off. Once they were supported by their idea of their high traditions […] now they were empty in Africa, and unprotected, with nothing to fall back on. They had begun to rot. I was like them. Unless I acted now, my fate would be like theirs. That constant questioning of mirrors and eyes; compelling others to look for the blemish that kept you in hiding; lunacy in a small room. I decided to rejoin the world […] I wrote to Nazruddin that I was coming to London […] When no other choice was left to me, when family and community hardly existed, when duty hardly had a meaning, and there were no safe houses.
“What place is there in the world for people like that? There are so many of them… What happens to these people? Where do they go? How do they live? Do they go back home? Do they have homes to go back to? You’ve talked a lot, Salim, about those girls from East Africa in the tobacco kiosks, selling cigarettes at all hours of the night… You say they don’t have a future and that they don’t even know where they are. I wonder whether that isn’t their luck. They expect to be bored, to do what they do. The people I’ve been talking about have expectations and they know they’re lost in London… The area is full of them, coming to the centre because it is all they know about and because they think it’s smart, and trying to make something out of nothing. You can’t blame them. They’re doing what they see the big people doing.”
Nazruddin Quotes in A Bend in the River
Their obsession was with more than a skin blemish. They had cut themselves off. Once they were supported by their idea of their high traditions […] now they were empty in Africa, and unprotected, with nothing to fall back on. They had begun to rot. I was like them. Unless I acted now, my fate would be like theirs. That constant questioning of mirrors and eyes; compelling others to look for the blemish that kept you in hiding; lunacy in a small room. I decided to rejoin the world […] I wrote to Nazruddin that I was coming to London […] When no other choice was left to me, when family and community hardly existed, when duty hardly had a meaning, and there were no safe houses.
“What place is there in the world for people like that? There are so many of them… What happens to these people? Where do they go? How do they live? Do they go back home? Do they have homes to go back to? You’ve talked a lot, Salim, about those girls from East Africa in the tobacco kiosks, selling cigarettes at all hours of the night… You say they don’t have a future and that they don’t even know where they are. I wonder whether that isn’t their luck. They expect to be bored, to do what they do. The people I’ve been talking about have expectations and they know they’re lost in London… The area is full of them, coming to the centre because it is all they know about and because they think it’s smart, and trying to make something out of nothing. You can’t blame them. They’re doing what they see the big people doing.”