Beautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful,Even if the surface is ugly.Truthful is he who says what is true,Even if the truth is ugly.Ugly is he who measures beauty by its exterior,Without first weighing the interior.And ugly is the man who judges harshly what he sees looking out,Without first judging what he sees in the mirror.Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

What treaty is it that finally separates those two territories, the hard resolve of our exteriors and the terrible disaster on our insides?

An insult bestowed on your interior and exterior personality; for causes beyond control, kills you innumerably, till the last breath.

Civil order mattered. Zoe didn’t know why Farah continued to wear the headscarf, but most Middle-Eastern women wore modest clothing to anchor themselves to a moral order, in an upside-down world. Zoe wore the chador as a protective shell, to erase herself, to avoid thinking, to envelop herself in the complete custody of her adopted Muslim sisters. In their care she would come out healed, able to process the bigotry that caused the murder of her Jewish parents. Then, when she was whole again, she would reclaim her place in the world. Though others couldn’t see it, behind the nameless, shapeless, Middle-Eastern garb, she was healing. The chador cocooned and nurtured her. Dour exteriors meant blossoming interiors . . . to Zoe. Judaism centered her, but Islam shielded her. Both served their purpose . . . for now.

It was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.