We all attempt suicide several times in our lives, and sooner or later we all succeed

The expression “We all attempt suicide several times in our lives, and sooner or later we all succeed” is a remembered line from Karla that Lin offers while he and Lisa sit beside the sea on Marine Drive. Its force in the scene lies in its uncertainty: it gives shape to Lisa’s thoughts about Abdullah without establishing that he deliberately sought death.

The Line in Context

After a meeting, Lisa and Lin sit at the sea wall where Abdullah had once placed a hand on Lin’s shoulder as Lin struggled with thoughts of drowning. Their conversation begins haltingly, in fragments shared by two lonely people. Lisa says Abdullah had known he might be killed: after nearly dying several times in the Iran–Iraq war, she thinks he may have wanted to die because he had left his friends and family behind. She also recalls that he gave her money in a case and had spoken about being killed.

Lin answers, “Maybe,” then recalls Karla’s saying. The qualification matters: the expression is not offered as a diagnosis of Abdullah or as proof of his intentions. It is a stark possibility placed beside Lisa’s account, as the indifferent sea gives their grief a physical setting without resolving it.

Meaning and Narrative Use

The line turns suicide from a single, clearly defined act into a pattern of attempts that may recur across a life, ending in an eventual success. In this conversation, that grim inevitability meets the less certain language of bereavement: Lisa wonders whether Abdullah wanted to die, while Lin neither confirms nor rejects her interpretation. The saying lets him respond to her pain without claiming knowledge he does not have.

Its return also connects this moment to Karla, whose words Lin remembers at a precise place bound to his earlier despair and Abdullah’s kindness. The expression thus carries more than its fatalistic surface: spoken in the company of someone grieving Abdullah, it becomes a way of acknowledging how difficult it is to distinguish intention, survival, and loss.