ألا أسمع وسوسة الشيطان وأرجع إلى بلدي بجماله وقبحه، بقنوطه وضحكاته، وأحرص على أن يكون لي وطن له نبض وعروق، وليس شيئًا مطمورًا في دهاليز القلب وعتامات الغربة والشتات..

That I should not listen to the devil's whisper, but go back to my country with its beauty and its ugliness, its despair and its laughter, and make sure I have a homeland with a pulse and veins—not something buried in the corridors of the heart and the darkness of exile and dispersion.

وبتُّ ليلتي وحيدًا إلا من أطياف من كانوا يومًا في هذا المكان، يخايلونني وأخايلهم، يحدثونني وأحدثهم، ويُقْبلون ويُدْبرون.. وكأني أعيش زمنًا، غير الزمن الذي كنت فيه.. زمنًا خُلق لتوِّه، أنا الفاعل فيه والمفعول..

I spent the night alone but for the shades of those who once lived here: they haunted me and I them, they spoke to me and I to them, coming and going—as if I were living in a time other than the one I had been in, a time just created, in which I was both the doer and the done-to.

كان حزنه حزنهم وكربه كربهم، غير أنه شعر بأنه إذا اختلط وقال فقوله مجروح وأيًا كان ما يبوح به فبوحه قابل للتأويل

Their grief was his grief and their anguish his anguish, yet he felt that if he mingled and spoke, his word would be suspect, and whatever he confided would be open to interpretation.