In school I was able to discover some parts of my lost self. There I established myself as a person, something I had not been able to do at home. (p4… - Fadwa Tuqan

The iron mould the family cast us in and would not allow us to break, the time-worn rules difficult to overturn, the mindless traditions imprisoning the girl in a life of trivialities...I yearned continually to escape from my time and place. The time was an age of subjection, repression and dissolution into nothingness; the place was the prison of the house.
Some come into this world to find the way smoothly paved before them; others arrive to find it thorny and rough.
Fate threw me on to a rough path and on it I began my journey up the mountain.
I carried the rock and endured the fatigue of the endless ascents and descents.
Great expectations and soaring dreams are not enough; even sheer will-power is not sufficient.
I realised that action is the obverse of the coin, the reverse being dream and will-power. I determined to do business with this two-sided coin: will and action.

A world in tumult... I search in it for a bright spot, but I hear nothing but the noise of radio broadcasts on every side. It is like a nightmare. (p187)

A seed does not see the light without first cleaving a difficult path through the earth. This story of mine is the story of the seed's battle against the hard rocky soil; a story of struggle, deprivation and enormous difficulties. (first page)