Midaq Alley

What hopeless wretches we are. Our country is pitiful and so are the people. Why is it that the only time we find a little happiness is when the world is involved in a bloody war? Surely it's only the devil who has pity on us in this world.

Abbas now marveled at the strength of love, its power and its strange magic. He thought it right that God had created mankind capable of love and then left the task of developing life to the fertility of love.

Satan finds the doors of youth an easy entrance and he slips in both secretly and openly to spread his havoc. We should do all we can do to prevent the doors of youth opening to him and keep them tightly closed. Just think of elderly men to whom age has given the keys of respectability. What would be the situation if we were to see them deliberately opening these doors and calling out in invitation to the devil?

If money is the aim and object of those who squabble for power, then there is clearly no harm in money being the objective of the poor voters.

The barber is young and Mr. Alwan is old; the barber is of the same class as Hamida and Mr. Alwan is not. The marriage of a man like Alwan to a girl like your daughter is bound to bring problems which will make her unhappy.

Some consider that such tragedies afflicting apparently blameless people are signs of revengeful justice, the wisdom of which is beyond the understanding of most people. So you will hear them say that if the bereaved father, for example, thought deeply, he would realize his loss was just a punishment for some sin either he or his forebears committed. Yet surely God is more just and merciful than to treat the innocent as the guilty...

He [Kirsha] was a narcotics peddler and accustomed to doing his business under a veil of darkness. Normal life had eluded him and he had become a prey to perversions.

Kirsha thought of Hitler as the world's greatest bully; indeed his admiration for him stemmed from what he heard of his cruelty and barbarity. He wished him success, viewing him like those mythical bravados of literature Antar and Abu Zaid.

It's fantastic the way these young men act. Why, they scarcely have a penny to their names, yet they see no reason why they shouldn't get married and populate the whole alley with children who get their food from garbage carts.

He was, in fact, a veritable crouching tiger, willing to cringe and fawn until he mastered his adversary, and woe to anyone he did master! Experience had taught him that this gentleman and others like him were enemies with whom must be friendly. They were, as he put it, useful devils.