“The place we run toward runs toward us!”
Source: Birds of Caution, 1996 (later editions noted, e.g. 2012) · Check the source
Disputed attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is attributed online to Ibrahim Nasrallah and associated with Birds of Caution, but the evidence comes from reader-submitted quotation pages rather than a verified printed passage.
- What remains uncertain
- No page number, edition or primary-text citation has been located; the quotation is plausibly Nasrallah’s but not independently verified.
Understanding the quote
The line makes place active: the homeland seems to move toward the person who seeks it. Read against Nasrallah’s Birds of Caution, it reads less like a self-help axiom and more like a poetic claim about memory, exile and the pull of belonging. The syntax turns longing into a lived paradox.
In the original · Arabic
المكان الذي نركض إليه يركض إلينا!
The story behind it
Birds of Caution was first published in 1996 and later reissued; reports say it was banned in Jordan for depicting sensitive historical events tied to Palestinian experience.
Going further
- The era
- Published 1996, the novel engages events from 1948 through Black September (1970), central to Palestinian history.
- The thinking
- Part of modern Palestinian/postcolonial literature that links individual memory to national history. In practice it uses personal stories, dreams and symbols to make collective trauma visible.
- Key word
- Place as memory: the idea that locations carry history and act on those who remember them.
Three challenges to live it
In the app, you pick the one that fits your day, and in the evening you say how it went.
Write for 12 minutes a letter to a place you remember: describe one specific sensory detail (smell, sound, texture) and why it returns to you today.
The quote makes place active. Naming a sensory memory makes the 'place that runs toward you' tangible and ties longing to concrete images.
Sit for 5 minutes with eyes closed and do a guided breath: imagine the place calling moves closer with each inhale, then write down two words.
The line reverses travel. This brief visualization lets you feel place as an active force and distills the emotion into two concrete words.
Spend 20 minutes making a collage or quick sketch that shows the place moving toward you: arrows, textures, cut photos—imperfect but expressive.
The quote personifies place; making a visual of that motion lets you grasp the interplay of memory and longing without translating it into words.
How does a place from your past shape what you long for now?
Report an error
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