Sometimes it was difficult, nay impossible, to think about things we got used not to thinking about; things that we are used to taking as they are: it is wrong to torture animals, but fine to slaughter them; women grew their hair but men cut it short; and a car owner is accorded more respect than a barefooted man though both are human beings.
The above quote is from the novella "The Secret of His Power," by the Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris, recently translated by Rasheed El-Enany and published by The American University in Cairo Press in a collection entitled Tales of Encounter. The other two pieces in the collection, "Madam Vienna" and "New York 80" are deeply flawed, in ways that I might post about later. But "The Secret of His Power," which I have not yet finished, I nonetheless strongly recommend, for that sentence and many more.
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