Saqi Books

The ultimate goal of the Sufi is to become one with the invisible, that is, the absolute

would have been easier than for them to come to an agreement to bring

influence of immigrants who had come in large numbers from the Muslim areas of the empire. The second half of the 16th century was a period of rapid expansion

Cooking is the talent of knowing what goes with what, of using poetic imagination to achieve smell and taste, and of creating sensuous meaning out of primitive form.

Cooking is the poetry of the senses when they are combined in the hand, an edible poem which cannot tolerate mistakes in the balance of the ingredients.

And he says: ‘The free man is he who chooses his exile

for some reason or other’

I am free so

I’ll walk on, then the way will become clear.

Exile? The visitor longs for it, because it is like being a bird flying happily around with nobody asking it: ‘What’s your name? What do you want?’

Pretending to be neutral, in a poem or a novel, is the only forgivable crime against morality.

I said: ‘No! Things might have been

different if they had turned to look at their shadows embracing

and sweating and falling on the pavement

like autumn leaves.’

Beirut is deprived of the chance to forget her wounds or remember her tomorrow, which has been abandoned to the throw of a dice in a game of backgammon played without rules, like the experimentation of postmodernist poets in her empty cafés.