Ruth Ahmed Quotes

#1. Are you happy?' she asked.
'Honour... I've been happy since the moment I met you.

Ruth Ahmed

#2. I wanted my eternity in carbon molecules, in being part of the trees, the sky, air itself

Ruth Ahmed

#3. As the days dwindled towards the end of the week I knew only one thing: I couldn't return to our old life.

Haroon had taken Honour and Al with him,

Ruth Ahmed

#4. 9/11 forced us to build another identity, to look deep and say who are we and what do we believe and is killing in the name of Islam part of that religion?

No. No. No.

Ruth Ahmed

#5. People don't really change, they just adapt to circumstances.

Ruth Ahmed

#6. Do you ever look up at the stars and try to contemplate the ends of the universe?

Ruth Ahmed

#7. The alternatives in my life went through my mind. Unemployed, alone, despairing, watching daytime TV. That couldn't end well.

Or helping people, like genuinely making a difference. Imagine waking up and doing that every day?

Ruth Ahmed

#8. The drugs took over and she fell asleep then.
Only her face was visible, the medical equipment acting as some hideous hijab for her.

Ruth Ahmed

#9. He looked straight at me and winked. On anyone else it would have looked ridiculous - 1996 had moved beyond the language of winking at girls.

Ruth Ahmed

#10. Her English was sweet, an effort for her, anachronistic and unpractised.

Ruth Ahmed

#11. The evening that Al and I met became the night that we met. By the time we fell asleep at daybreak we were different people

Ruth Ahmed

#12. I drank in his smell, I'd missed him so much more than I'd realised. Despite dreaming of him every night, besides my secret habit of writing Honour Hussain in curled scripts on every scrap piece of paper, I surprised myself by how much I needed him.

Ruth Ahmed

#13. The fires of hell were seventy times hotter than the fires of the iron.

Ruth Ahmed

#14. Honour and I would have to create our world, live by our own rules. My family wasn't ready for her just yet.

I didn't know if they ever would be.

Ruth Ahmed

#15. I steadied by guitar against the table, and steadied myself with it.

And forgot every rule I had ever known.

Ruth Ahmed

#16. Do you have a girlfriend?'
'No,' I said quickly.

Deny Honour again. Peter only denied Jesus three times. I must have denied Honour like three thousand times.

Ruth Ahmed

#17. Ruby clapped her hands in glee and gave a comedic wiggle of her head, Bollywood style.

I know the song now, can even sing it, but back then all I heard was the verdant Punjabi, the striking primary colours of the five rivers, the intricate history of a complex land.

Ruth Ahmed

#18. Honour looked so much like a child herself, confined to bed, a white nightgown, like one of those maudlin Victorian dolls. Her cheeks were red, like someone had painted them, but I knew it was from rubbing, wiping away her melancholy.

Ruth Ahmed

#19. Her voice was erudite, interesting; the voice of someone who straddled two cultures with a surety and style that I wished my boyfriend could find. She was smart, funny, and, above all, completely capable of controlling her life and what happened to it.

Ruth Ahmed

#20. Five words that were the hardest words I would ever have to say,
Five pillars of my faith that couldn't save him that day.
Five rivers, the Panj Aab, that didn't flow through his veins.
Five minutes that changed our world forever.

Ruth Ahmed

#21. I had to be an adult, be a father without a son, so for one last moment I needed to be a son who needed his mother.

Ruth Ahmed

#22. I closed my eyes tightly and hoped that love was enough.

Ruth Ahmed

#23. Honour, in her modern self-confidence, had grown up never having to face actual raw, passionate, drop-down-dead-hostility. She didn't really understand what was going to happen,

Ruth Ahmed

#24. I couldn't help but think of Al's pre-ordained betrothal to Billo and of how hard the match-makers had worked to find the girl beautiful enough to match this extraordinary man - this extraordinary man of mine.

Ruth Ahmed

#25. I would find tiny flowers left by somebody else, and I would know Honour had been to London. I only felt a bit sad she hadn't let me know and met up with me.

She didn't mention anything when I went to Kent at the weekends either.

It was what it was.

Ruth Ahmed

#26. My heart was in my mouth. I realised that I had no desire to know any more about her past. What was behind her made me feel sick, petrified. Only the future mattered now.

Ruth Ahmed

#27. I needed a fresh start, away from the memories that we had made for him, away from the home that didn't feel like my own anymore.

Away from the people that had been ready to welcome him.

Away from Honour and Ali.

Ruth Ahmed

#28. They say some couples are joined in heaven, and on Earth they look for their partner soul to be with.

I knew I had found mine in her. And who can fight heaven?

Ruth Ahmed

#29. I said I love you about a million times. Maybe not the actual words, but in every other way.

Ruth Ahmed

#30. There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees - as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.

Ruth Ahmed

#31. The sadness began later, in waves as crushing as the contractions had been,

Ruth Ahmed

#32. The fire within her, and her soul, were eclipsing my own.

Ruth Ahmed

#33. There was a time when I was lucky enough to believe that 'There's this girl in Pakistan' would be the worst five words that Al ever said to me. Years later, they would be totally eclipsed by 'They can't find a heartbeat'.

Ruth Ahmed

#34. It was things like that I remembered about Ruby, the incongruity, the struggle to find herself.

No matter what she wore though she was always Ruby, always herself.

Ruth Ahmed