“ You feel well, Ali? You have a very faraway look on your face, beta,' my dad said. 'Like you have left your heart behind.'He fixed me with eyes as liquid black as mine and for a moment I felt exposed,… Ruth Ahmed
“ When I was a child I burnt the back of my right hand on a hot iron. I can't recall the pain, but there's an eye-shaped scar as testament to it. As a teenager I used to think it was the all seeing eye… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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
“ 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
“ I steadied by guitar against the table, and steadied myself with it.And forgot every rule I had ever known. Ruth Ahmed
“ 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
“ 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 pa… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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 col… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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
“ 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
“ 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
“ 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 Hono… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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
“ 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… Ruth Ahmed
“ 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
“ 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 capa… Ruth Ahmed
