How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #7
I felt uneasy when she said that she used to wonder why God had given me to them and that it was to keep them company. I sensed that she meant well, but something about her words was troubling to me. Why should my existence have meaning only in the scheme of someone else's life? Why did it need that justification? Why did I not exist just because I existed, the way she did or any of my siblings did? (86)
Ahmed's relationship with her mother is never a warm and fuzzy thing, but it's complicated further by several things. One is that Nanny makes her understand that Mother didn't want any more children before Ahmed was born—and that she'd taken steps to get rid of another child before Ahmed came on the scene.
Because of this, Ahmed is deeply distrustful of her mother's motivations and any affection that she attempts to show. Whenever her mother means to be motherly, things just come out wrong (or Ahmed can't help but read something else into it). It's a negativity that charges all interactions between them and that still invades her thoughts when she recalls these moments with her mother.
Quote #8
Then I suddenly remembered—its significance coming home to me only then, abruptly, like a revelation—what I had learned that summer: perhaps it was not, after all, the family legacy I was struggling with but my own mother's wish for my death while she was carrying me, her thoughts and desires translating into chemicals of rejection. (90)
Ahmed continues to struggle with the legacy of her childhood after she's in college. Though she's independent and living in another country, she feels that her mother's desire for Ahmed's death (Father let slip that Mother wanted to end the pregnancy that produced Ahmed) contributed to her depression.
Although Ahmed knows that depression and suicide runs in her family, she's totally certain that this more mystical transference of rejection is the reason for her inability to move on. In her struggle to define herself and find purpose, Ahmed continually returns to this early rejection by her mother in order to make sense of things.
Quote #9
For the truth is that the most unforgettable, lyrical experience in those years was not a moment of either romantic or erotic involvement. Rather it was a moment of intense presence and connection to the living world around us and also of companionship. (190)
Ahmed's early adulthood isn't all brooding and anxiety. She recalls this transcendent moment when she and three friends broke curfew to frolic in the woods as her most cherished memory of her college life. It shows us the kind of things she values: friendship, beauty, mindfulness—and perhaps a little wildness.