Laila

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

Women endure the labor of childbirth and men send themselves to war! But I gave birth to eight children and never once did I cry like I saw some of those men out there before they even fired their first shot! I think it has something to do with the unnaturalness of killing compared to the naturalness of giving birth.

Ana Castillo, So Far From God 

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

Pollution

My skin is polluted, my face is polluted, my nose can’t really take air in, my lips burn and crack, my long neck itches, my arms too. All the exposed parts are polluted, and NO, I am NOT going to cover any of them just to keep them “safe”. Come on! My vagina, never exposed, is polluted! It was not, it was never, I never believed in penetrative sex anyway! No, I wasn’t silly proud of being a virgin, I leave that to all religious people who believe that somehow virgins can do miracles and fucked women can’t. Yeah right, there has to be another nicer way of putting it but deep down, that’s how they think about it; virgin or fucked. So, I was saying that I was not proud, it wasn’t a matter of keeping my family’s name intact, or my father’s gelbab unstained; it was a matter of  not wanting this invasive kind of relation, why is it necessary to just go all the way inside another person’s body to prove the love, or to orgasm, you can do both without forcing a part of you so deep inside me for god’s sake! And now I end up with a polluted vagina, thanks to your semen that made me abort, thanks to your semen that made me feel this huge clot coming out of me, I gasped you know! I almost fainted feeling it coming out. And I was sad, and I cried my eyes out looking at the thing. I never called it anything other than that: “the thing” because that’s what you said it was, right? Just a thing. But it wasn’t just a thing by the way. It was a rescued life. I rescued her from you, from the world, from this godforsaken country, and from myself. I saved a life, and this I am proud of. Prolifers, my ass! I AM PROLIFE! I saved this innocent girl’s life AND MINE. You are just a bunch of people who had to live with your dumb choices of bringing innocent lives to this planet to torment them with questions of why they are here or what they are going to do to find meaning. And you call me selfish? Well, obviously, you are just pointing this bloody finger at me so that I don’t point at you, selfish! - A. S. Laila

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself

D. H. Lawrence

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e7844P77Is)

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

And have mercy on my heart in its old days.

Mostafa Ibrahim

[quotemadness]

Love who you love while you have them. That’s all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you’ll never run out.

Ann Brashares (via quotemadness)

[visitheworld]

Prasat Prem Temple, Siem Reap / Cambodia (by Septimus Low).

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

Home - Lost in Translation

For a lot of Arab ESL and EFL learners, the word “home” is either misunderstood or mysterious. This is the case basically because when translated into Arabic, the word is usually translated into “بيت” bayt which is the Arabic equivalent for house. So, when it is taught with its Arabic thought-to-be equivalent, it is misunderstood to mean the architecture, the walls, the concrete thing that constitutes a place you can go into, lock yourself in, and spend time alone or with others. And when a teacher or any person who has been more exposed to English tries to convey the other “deeper” meaning, the more abstract meaning of home as the sense of peace, of safety, of ownership, of choice, of freedom that a person gets when they are in a place they have, it is often hard to grasp the meaning.

For me, it took me some time to grasp it too; I was one of those who learned English by learning the Arabic equivalents for words. But, maybe studying literature helped me, maybe reading Sandra Cisneros’s “No Speak English” helped me understand what “home” means. “Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light. The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's not the same, you know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would.”

Mamacita, Oh! How much I relate! There are plenty of places; rooms, houses, apartments, where I can go right this second, plenty of places I can simply go and spend time, alone or with others, where I can cook and dance, watch movies, and make love, laugh and cry. But in the sense of home, I am homeless.

[wheresmybubble]

Wishful thinking.

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

مجهود كبير جري كتير وهَلك جري كتير في المكان في نقطة صفر

Laila Sami ليلى سامي

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

I will become, one day, what I want.

Mahmoud Darwish

[inward-pilgrim-blog]

You have something in this world, so rise.

Ghassan Kanafani

[wheresmybubble]

A simple one inspired by a quote from the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert.

[inoccuity]

I wanna hold your hand and wear your sweaters. I wanna go to coffee shops and stare at your smile. I wanna go to art museums and have you kiss me between the paintings. I wanna take polaroids of us, of you, I want us to be art

[wheresmybubble]

The possibilities are endless. 

[nothingwithoutwords]

to the quiet ones who are afraid of the sound of their voices: write and your words will scream from the page (and you will be heard).

to the quiet ones by shelby leigh (via nothingwithoutwords)