Questions to consider while reading
Key Quotes
“The first thing she felt was a blinding light. She saw nothing. The light was painful, even though her eyes were still shut” (2999).
‘She suddenly felt frightened, for human forms frightened her more than any others” (3000).
“Her eyes began to make out bodies sitting on that elevated place, above each head a body, smooth heads without hair, in the light as red as monkeys’ rumps” (3000).
“His face was as red as his head, his eyes as round and bulging as a frog’s, moving slowly here and there, his nose as curved as a hawk’s beak, beneath it a yellow moustache as thick as a bundle of dry grass, which quivered above the opening of a mouth as taut as wire and permanently gaping like a mousetrap” (3000).
“Her numbed senses awoke and her ears pricked up to the sound of that strange name: Leila Al-Fargani. As though it wasn’t her name. She hadn’t heard it for ages. It was the name of a young woman named Leila, a young woman who had worn young woman’s clothes, had seen the sun and walked on two feet like other human beings. She had been that woman a very long time ago, but since then she hadn’t worn a young woman’s clothes nor seen the sun nor walked on two feet. For a long time she’d been a small animal inside a dark and remote cave and when they addressed her, they only used animal names” (3001).
“What a long nightmare she was living!” (3002).
“Her mother always used to say to her: What’s politics got to do with you? You’re not a man. Girls of your age think only about marriage” (3002).
“Suddenly she discovered that the hall was full of heads crammed together in rows, all of them undoubtedly human. Some of the heads appeared to have a lot of hair, as if they were those of women or girls. Some of them were small, as if those of children” (3003).
“I sometimes wonder whether I ever really gave birth to you or if you are still inside me” (3004).
“I said that the smell becomes normal when we get used to it and live with it every day” (3004).
“Only later she understood that it was an American form of greeting” (3005).
“His eyes began to scour the faces and eyes, and his lips parted a little as though he were about to shout: I’m her father, I’m Al-Fargani who fathered her and whose name she bears” (3006).
“They’ll cook up the case in the conference chamber … That’s common practice … Justice and law don’t exist here” (3006).
“He had neither name nor existence. What is left of a man whose honor is violated? He had told her bitterly: Politics, my girl, is not for women and girls. But she had not listened to him. If she had been a man, he would not be suffering now the way he was. None of those dogs would have been able to violate his honour and dignity. Death was preferable for him and for her now” (3006).
“One of them, lying on top of her, had said: This is the way we torture you women—by depriving you of the most valuable thing you possess. Her body under him was as cold as a corpse but she had managed to open her mouth and say to him: You fool! The most valuable thing I possess is not between my legs. You’re all stupid” (3007).
“She would have told them that they had stopped using that method of torture when they discovered that it didn’t torture her. They began to search for other methods” (3007).
“Foolishness means that he doesn’t think, that he’s mindless, that he’s an animal. That’s the worst thing you can call an ordinary man” (3008).
“A few minutes later, utter silence descended on the hall. The courtroom was completely emptied. As for her, they took her back to where she’d been before” (3008).