Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela (2010)

Leila Fuad Aboulela FRSL ( born 1964) is a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright of Sudanese origin based in Aberdeen, Scotland. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Scotland in 1990 where she began her literary career. Until 2023, Aboulela has published six novels and several short stories, which have been translated into fifteen languages.

Quotes

• “All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.”[1]
• “The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak”[2]
• “I'm not middle-class; I do not have a degree. I am upper-class without money.”[3]
• “Money is like grass. It withers. [... ] but our deeds last forever.”[4]
• “And why is it that so many years later it is so easy to distinguish the bullies from their prey? Adult bodies surrounding the children of long ago. The years have changed nothing.”[5]
• “Every holiday had a perfect length and then it turned into an indulgence, time sitting heavy on idle hands, the mind free to find fault with life left behind, too much friction between people, familiarity turning to contempt. Every holiday was a threat.”[6]
• “Perhaps we half and halfs should always make a choice, one nationality instead of the other, one language instead of the other. We should nourish one identity and starve the other so that it would atrophy and drop off. Then we could relax and become like everyone else, we could snuggle up to the majority and fit in.”[7]
• “In the distant past, Muslim doctors advised nervous people to look up at the sky. Forget the tight earth. Imagine that the sky, all of it, belonged to them alone. Crescent, low moon, more stars than the eyes looking up at them. But the sky was free, without any price, no one I knew spoke of it, no one competed for it. Instead, one by one those who could afford it began to sleep indoors in cool air-conditioned rooms, away from the mosquitoes and the flies...”[8]
• “I like talking to you,' he said, slowly.

'Why?' That was the way to hear nice things. Ask why.”[9]

• “I must settle for freedom in this modern time”[10]
• “What ages you faster, suffering or experience?”[11]
• “The sweetest things in life were not necessarily what one strove for and grabbed. Instead, many many times the All-Merciful, the All-Generous would give His servants without being petitioned, without waiting to be asked.”[12]
• “I wanted to be good but I wasn't sure if I was prepared”[13]
• “Words on a page were seductive, free, inviting everyone, without distinction.”[14]
• “The blow, inevitable in itself, comes straight from the source without any intermediaries.”[15]
• “As if reading his mind, Jamal-al-Din said, 'To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate.”[16]
• “Why do bad things happen? For pedagogical reasons, so that we can experience the power of Allah, catch a glimpse of Hell and fear it, so that we can practice seeking refuge in Him and, when relief comes give thanks to His mercy. Darkness was created so that, like plants, we could yearn and turn to the light.”[17]
• “Allah tests our patience and our fortitude. He tests out strength of faith. be patient and there will endless rewards for you, insha'Allah" - Utaz Badr”[18]
• “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, When Allah loves a people, He tries them.”[19]
• “I am touched by her life, how it moves forward, pulses and springs. There is no fragmentation, nothing stunted or wedged. I circle back, I regress, the past doesn't let go. It might as well be a malfunction, a scene repeating itself, a scratched vinl record, a stutter.”[20]
• “Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled”[21]
• “I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm good. I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become -”[22]
• “Eid Crescent

I feed on bitterness and satiety never comes. Today sadness has renewed itself. Let me narrate the story of two souls, Whose love was struck by the evil eye, In a twist which Fate had hidden. Luck won’t smile and Time will scorch. Only the stars know what is wrong with me. I almost sense them craning to wipe my tears away.”[23]

• “This is the enemy, what is irreversible, what has already reached the farthest of places. There is no going back. They can bomb bus-loads of tourists, burn the American flag, but they are not shooting the enemy. It is already with them, inside them, what makes them resentful, defensive, what makes them no longer confident of their vision of the world.”[24]
• “Can I aske forgiveness for someone else, someone whose already dead?

Yes, you can. Of course you can. And you can give charity in their name and you can recite the Qur'an for their sake. All these things will reach them, your prayers will ease the hardship and loneliness of their grave or it will reach them in bright, beautiful gifts. Gifts to unwrap and enjoy and they will know that this gift is from you.”[25]

• Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized?[26]
• “So much darkness made her uneasy. There was definitely a weight pushing down on the world. Misfortune was always hovering close around people’s shoulders. But she would fight it off, and keep fighting with all her might. Otherwise she would be annihilated by this nameless, all-reaching gloom which she couldn’t figure out or map.”[27]
• All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.[28]

• I find myself excited about reading African historical fiction more than other genres because it feels to me that this is actually new and exciting.
  • Interview (2023)

• I just want people to say to me, these are real characters. Then I’m happy. It doesn’t matter whether it’s sympathetic or not.
  • Interview (2023)

• if you want to produce art, you want it to be more than defensive – you want it to be more than a response, it must be structured in such a way that it is self-supporting.
  • Interview (2020)

Interview with World Literature Today (2019)

• In my mid-twenties, I moved from Sudan to Scotland. The trauma of that move was the catalyst that launched my journey as a writer. It was as if the person I always thought I would be (a university statistics professor like my mother, a privileged member of Khartoum society) died and a new person was born—someone who was marginalized due to race and religion, a writer without a creative writing degree. I was homesick and could not stop comparing my new home with the old one. These thoughts and emotions couldn’t find any outlet except that of fiction. I felt compelled to write. If you had asked me then if writing was “something I enjoyed and wanted to pursue,” I would have found this wording alien. I was never attracted to the idea of being a writer. My early writing caused me disturbance rather than enjoyment. I was like someone possessed.

• In my fiction, I am looking for a place of compassion, a place in which the traveler can share the baggage they carried with them, a place to hum the yearning for home as well as push forward and claim a position in this new world, which might not be welcoming at first, but, hopefully, there are spots that can give way to the pressure of a stranger rather than resist. Because the immigrant experience is also often one of blunder and misunderstandings, I am also looking for a forgiving place where people can be given a second chance.

• Fiction is fueled by love and anger—my love for my father and his own love for his family and country fueled Lyrics Alley.

• Eurocentric literature is also Christian-centric no matter how much writers and readers regard it as secular or humanist. Every genre from crime to science fiction is heavy with Christian symbolism, while secular literary fiction, even if it is in opposition to Christianity, is also still engaged with its ethos. I write from a Muslim perspective, from within Islamic tradition. Not all my characters are practicing Muslims; many as you say are cultural Muslims, and I don’t find it difficult to write about them because they are people I know and am in contact with.

• The role of art should be to bear witness to the truth no matter how complex or disturbing or dangerous.

• I do sometimes think of my books as food that I am serving to readers. A dish full of flavor with a moody texture and the chance shock of pepper. My characters are flawed rather than “good,” and so different readers respond to them in different ways—sometimes with impatience and sometimes with empathy. Either way I hope that readers feel a mild jolt of consciousness.