‘Come on, Hoda. Don’t rain on my parade. I’m a grown-up now and I need to live according to a formula. I want to get married and I want to have kids. Besides, we’re already engaged.’

‘But marriage isn’t supposed to be built upon a formula.’

‘Sure it is. You and your husband Tarek have an agreement. If he cheats on you, you look the other way.’

‘Yes, we have an agreement, and I may turn a blind eye to his mistakes. But I know that he loves me as much as I love him, even more. He treats me very well, and I love that.’

‘I’m going to love Sulayman, too. He’s great. I understand him even more. I have no problem with marriage.’

‘There’s a big difference between loving someone and accepting them.’

‘There’s a passageway between love and acceptance that one has to keep open. Sometimes you don’t even notice that it’s open. And with love, the other awakens something inside of you, something you nurture as much as necessary. Just like a flower, and you know that it only lives as long as you water it.’

‘What are you talking about? I can’t just decide how much to water my love. Love is as irrepressible and as undammable as a raging river. Maybe you’re talking about one kind of relationship. There’s companionship and affection, but there’s a difference. The love that I’m talking about comes with passion and dizziness, with lots of words, true romance and real adoration.’

‘Look, Hoda. I don’t want to leave the window fully open anymore, to let the curtains flap in the breeze. It’s true that if you open a window the air gets a bit more pleasant, but everything can get all messed up, all your stuff can get blown around. You might get cold, too. No, I’d rather just open the window a little bit or else shut it and run the air conditioning by remote control, to just sit here and feel safe. It’s much easier when things are clearly defined, when you know exactly where you stand. If you open the window just a little, you can count the stars, but you go out under a vast sky, you can’t count them all, you get lost, you get all confused.’

‘But there are more beautiful things. If love leaves you exposed under a vast sky, can’t you see how many stars there are up there?’

Alawiya Sobh, This thing called love (translated by Max Weiss), p. 207-208