Migration Quotes

When you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

You are...the embodimentof immediate good karma.The equalizer between bottomfeeders and the sanctimoniouscogs in the system.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they’d been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.

Now we’re guests in a faraway land nearly 40 years on. No trees, no cool breeze, no best friends. Only endless days spent in sending SMSs...

The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed so familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.