Your Kindle Notes For:

Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel

Ahmed Saadawi

Last accessed on Wednesday June 27, 2018

28 Highlight(s) | 8 Note(s)

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Yellow highlight | Location: 665 Note | Location: 665

what does ‘too oriental’ mean?” “Being oriental can be summed up in a line of poetry by Antara ibn Shaddad: ‘Are you surprised, Abla, that I haven’t washed or anointed myself with oil for two years?’”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,006 Note | Location: 1,006

Saidi turned on the stereo, and a Whitney Houston song came on. Saidi didn’t seem bothered by the scene in front of him.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,013 Note | Location: 1,013

Maysa, the thin girl, who wept bitterly when she was told she was being dismissed.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,085 Note | Location: 1,085

Everyone in the area had heard the story, and the local people were afraid and on the lookout because the killer had killed the beggars, who had become famous in death if not in life.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,087 Note | Location: 1,087

He had strangled them, and then, by some bizarre and complicated operation, he’d put their hands around each other’s throats.”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,103 Note | Location: 1,103

In fact “terrorist” was the term used for everyone who was against the government and the Americans.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,127 Note | Location: 1,127

When Faraj the estate agent heard that Abu Zaidoun had been killed, he said, “Poor man! It only took a little push for him to meet the Supreme Comrade.” He spoke with a touch of sarcasm, stretching out the word “comrade” with a wry smile.

Note:Killer?

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,145 Note | Location: 1,145

If she asked Father Josiah, he would tell her to ask for forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun—she never would. If she asked God or Saint George the Martyr or the ghost of her son, they would tell her she didn’t need to ask forgiveness for Abu Zaidoun. She was fully entitled to seek revenge because it would strengthen her faith and give her ailing spirit the energy it needed to keep on living.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,194 Note | Location: 1,194

Hadi left the coffee shop, saying good-bye to Aziz, his most trusted friend. All the others saw him as insignificant: no one would miss him if he disappeared, and this was a time when many people were disappearing for no logical reason, and he didn’t want to disappear. He wanted to stay alive, buying stuff that people wanted to get rid of, restoring it, and selling it again, without thoughts of amassing a fortune or expanding his operations, because that would be too much trouble, like having a disease.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,348 Note | Location: 1,348

Had the magazine published something hostile to beasts, or what? “Hello . . .” It was Nawal al-Wazir,

Note:666

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,505 Note | Location: 1,505

“It’s . . . it’s the One Who Has No Name,” the senior astrologer said, raising his arms in the air—a gesture that suited his flamboyant appearance: he had a long white pointed beard, a tall conical hat, and flowing robes. “What does that mean, the One Who Has No Name? So, what’s his name?” “The One Who Has No Name,” said the senior astrologer, who then took a few steps back and turned to leave the brigadier’s office.

Note:Funny

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,558 Note | Location: 1,558

He turned on the phone and found fourteen missed calls, half of them from the number 666.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,607 Note | Location: 1,607

What he said in his diaries couldn’t be squared with the way people saw him in the Jidayda district of Amara. He was highly respected and revered, but maybe that wasn’t an image Mahmoud’s father liked very much. It was an image that had been imposed on him and that he had finally managed to live with, but only by expressing his real self in his secret confessions.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,755 Note | Location: 1,755

The two dead beggars were victims of acts of stupidity, and the two surviving beggars were criminals, so the Whatsitsname strangled them to avenge the beggars they had killed. Because they had been secretly planning to do the same thing to him, and because the four of them would have failed in any attempt to kill him anyway (and this is the underlying significance of what happened on that strange night), they were intent on suicide but hadn’t found a good way to commit it until the Whatsitsname appeared, strolling down the dark lane in Daniel’s old clothes.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,805 Note | Location: 1,805

He had found out, for example, that each piece of dead flesh that made up his body fell off if he didn’t avenge the person it came from within a certain amount of time. But if he did avenge someone, then that person’s piece would fall off anyway, as if it was no longer needed.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,812 Note | Location: 1,812

“That’s not everything,” he said. “What’s worse is that people have been giving me a bad reputation. They’re accusing me of committing crimes, but what they don’t understand is that I’m the only justice there is in this country.”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,909 Note | Location: 1,909

“Will I fulfill my mission? I don’t know, but I will at least try to set an example of vengeance—the vengeance of the innocent who have no protection other than the tremors of their souls as they pray to ward off death.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,913 Note | Location: 1,913

They have turned me into a criminal and a monster, and in this way they have equated me with those I seek to exact revenge on. This is a grave injustice. In fact there is a moral and humanitarian obligation to back me, to bring about justice in this world, which has been totally ravaged by greed, ambition, megalomania, and insatiable bloodlust.

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Yellow highlight | Location: 1,965 Note | Location: 1,965

“When I consulted the Sophist, he told me that this eldest madman, because he is completely mad, is a blank page that can assimilate wisdom that transcends the bounds of reason and that, without knowing it, he speaks with the tongue of pure truth.”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 2,090 Note | Location: 2,090

‘Please don’t believe what the Magician says. He’s speaking for himself. He killed someone ten years ago and threw out his wife and his mother and killed a baby. He’s a criminal.’

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Yellow highlight | Location: 2,268 Note | Location: 2,268

or that he had sworn to grab him with his own hands and expose him on television so the whole world could see he was nothing more than a useless, despicable, lowly person who had made himself into a myth by exploiting people’s ignorance and fear and the chaos around them.

Note:Saddam?

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,414 Note | Location: 2,414

Farid Shawwaf made fun of the transformation of his old friend and thought that Mahmoud had started to cross to the other side. When Mahmoud laughed off such talk, Farid admonished, “You’re getting more and more like them. You’re trying to be one of them. Anyone who puts on a crown, even if only as an experiment, will end up looking for a kingdom.”

Note:Saddam?

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,528 Note | Location: 2,528

“So what’s this statue of the Virgin Mary for?” “I don’t know. There was a copy of the Throne Verse on top of it. The inscription fell apart and the statue appeared.”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 2,766 Note | Location: 2,766

What use is the house if life is hard? Fear, death, anxiety, criminals in the street, everyone watching as you walk past. Even when you’re asleep, it’s nightmares and jumping in fright all the time. The whole country’s starting to look like the Jewish ruin next door.” “‘Fear not those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.’”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 2,818 Note | Location: 2,818

“If you can foresee what’s going to happen, then that’s a gift from God, and He’s telling you that you can change fate for the better. I’m the god showing you what will happen because what happens depends on what you do. If you don’t do anything, then what you foresee will come about. If you act, you can take advantage of God’s permission to change what’s going to happen.”

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Yellow highlight | Location: 3,014 Note | Location: 3,014

the darkness inside us is the blackest variety known to man.

Note:Hadi bled black out

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,084 Note | Location: 3,084

Orouba, or “Arabness,” and rewrite it with the name Grand Prophet Hotel.

Note:Culture to religion

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,211 Note | Location: 3,211

Some wondered aloud why Umm Salim had worn such loose sleeves if she wasn’t pleased with herself and how white her arms were.

Note:Real Talk

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