Jinat Rehana Begum Quotes

#1. Can you lose your inborn talents? Can the gifts you come into this world with be taken away without your even noticing? Maybe it's my fault for wanting always to stem the fires within me? Perhaps there are some fires that should be allowed to rage on?

Jinat Rehana Begum

#2. But what is the point of buying vegetables in plastic bags? Everything from the supermarket smells of plastic. Everything from the market smells like it's supposed to.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#3. So I watch her work and put all her energy, all her force, all herself, all is inside her work. Does she think that this is what life means? She goes to work in the dark and comes home when it's dark. Does she know what the world looks like when the sun is shining?

Jinat Rehana Begum

#4. Sometimes, when you are busy and children ask funny questions, you don't think so much. You just answer quickly so they will leave you alone. If you don't answer, they will just keep asking or they will go and do something very bad.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#5. They want me to contain the raging fires within me. They need me to appreciate glowing embers, to understand that even weak flames need to be managed with a lot of careful planning.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#6. Scar tissue - it's a new layer of tender skin, lightly covering the wound. Still a vulnerable spot, the slightest little knock might tear the skin so it bleeds and the remembered ache from the old wound intensifies the pain from the latest blow.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#7. The doctors snap at the nurses, who snap at the patient care assistants, who snap at the cleaners, who snap at the patients who are too sick to respond. Those at the bottom of the heap have no choice but to be good. No one can doubt the virtue of the helpless.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#8. The first sound a child hears is very important. It determines character. A Muslim child always hears the Azan first. Words in praise of God.

Words to live by.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#9. Your mother wasn't upset. "Scars stay with you so you don't forget," she said. She seemed almost satisfied.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#10. I struggle to discover what these silent sons of mine want, but words have always failed me. They are sullen even as they tell me they are okay. I know they are lying but there is nothing I can do.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#11. Difficulties were fires. If you kept them in check, you could learn from them. You simply had to know how to fan them the right way.

Jinat Rehana Begum

#12. There is no denying it, our past stinks and seeps into our present. Occasionally I get such a potent whiff of history that my mind spins and my stomach lurches.

Jinat Rehana Begum