More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
‘Mashallah, mashallah. It’s a girl.� The midwife took a piece of flint, which she had tucked away in her bra, and cut the umbilical cord. She never used a knife or a pair of scissors for this purpose, finding their cold efficiency unsuitable to the messy task of welcoming a baby into this world. The old woman was widely respected in the neighbourhood, and considered, for all her eccentricities and reclusiveness, to be one of the uncanny ones � those who had two sides to their personality, one earthly, one unearthly, and who, like a coin tossed into the air, could at any time reveal either
...more
As the tastes of lemon and sugar melted on her tongue, so too her feelings dissolved into confusion. Years later, she would come to think of this moment as the first time she realized that things were not always what they seemed. Just as the sour could hide beneath the sweet, or vice versa, within every sane mind there was a trace of insanity, and within the depths of madness glimmered a seed of lucidity.
