How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
And what did it mean, that Nanny could be dismissed? Who else could be dismissed: could I be dismissed? Servants could be dismissed. Nanny wasn't a servant, but she wasn't a parent either. Were we, was I, more like a servant or a parent? Like Nanny? I think I felt that I occupied some marginal space, that I didn't belong quite at the center, where my parents and maybe even my siblings were. That I could be left out of things and maybe they wouldn't notice. (57)
This early memory highlights a kind of cultural and familial confusion Ahmed felt as a child. As a kid, she can't differentiate between family and paid help—especially since Nanny takes on the tasks that normally fall to a parent. Her relationship with Nanny also calls into question her relationship with the rest of the family.
She often feels isolated from her parents and siblings because she is left with Nanny. Ahmed's feeling of being left out or left behind might be mere childhood drama—or it might be something more. The sense that her mother never wanted her and the isolation of being left behind follows her well into adulthood.
Quote #5
I was fifteen. Like many girls that age, I was sure of one thing: I did not want to be like my mother. I was sure that I wasn't like her and would never grow up to be like her. I didn't want to think we were alike in anything, let alone in our deepest hearts' desires and didn't at all want to think that I might indeed be her daughter. (74)
Okay, ladies: you know how this feels. While most of us have rebelled against becoming like our moms (or dads), Ahmed's situation is further complicated by political and cultural issues. As a girl and young woman, Ahmed associated her mom with Arabic culture—something that Ahmed herself did not love.
And then she always viewed her mother as idle, lacking in ambition. Ahmed is thrown (and totally annoyed) when her mother confesses that she, too, wanted to be a writer. This seems to take the luster off of Ahmed's ambitions and her hardheaded disapproval of mom.
Quote #6
"You know how they say... 'The last grape in the bunch is always the sweetest?' That's what you are to us." For her to have sat contemplating me and saying these things, we must sometimes have sat in the same room, but I do not remember it. And now her words say to me that she must have been aware of my sadness and was trying to offer some consolation, whereas in my memory she simply did not bother with me at all, had made a scene about not leaving me in England because I was too young and had brought me home just to ignore me... (86)
Ahmed often entertains two versions of a past event to show how her interpretation of the moment has changed with time and knowledge. She'd always considered herself a sad and lonely child, unloved by her own mother. And that's exactly why this moment throws her so much. She has to admit that her perception of her mother's love is pretty far wide of the mark when she recalls this moment.
But that doesn't really help her resolve the sense that her mother didn't really want her or her lingering feelings of loneliness. Ahmed is left with a more complex understanding of her place in the family, but this is not necessarily helpful or comforting.