How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #7
I used to love running in to Grandmother and, after greeting her, resting my head in her lap as she gently stroked my hair...I was often told as a child that I looked like her and that I was in fact just like her, and so I would lie looking up at her, studying intently, upside down, the planes and curves of her face, searching it to see who I was and what exactly I was like. (107)
This sweet moment is truly the happiest that we see Ahmed in her childhood. Grandmother is always a character of gentle kindness and pure love. It's a total bonus that Ahmed looks just like her. Looking at her grandmother's face is an exercise in predicting her own future—something that she finds both fascinating and comforting.
Quote #8
"You're an Arab!" she finally screamed at me. "An Arab! And you don't know your own language!"
"I am not an Arab!" I said, suddenly furious myself. "I am Egyptian! And anyway we don't speak like this!" And I banged my book shut. (243)
Oh, Miss Nabih! This encounter with her angry Arabic teacher is such a formative experience that Ahmed returns to it over and over again. It shows that she was aware of an identity crisis within her (and in society as a whole) brewing from her childhood. It's an understanding that her sense of self was being reduced to a political category—and she doesn't like it.
As a young student, her response is fiery, even if she can't yet articulate the reasons for her anger. Also at issue: the tension between spoken Egyptian Arabic and classical, written Arabic. Ahmed doesn't believe that an "artificial" language should be valued above her native language—but it is.
Quote #9
They defined us as "Arab" at the Peace conferences of Versailles and Sèvres when they dealt the Middle Eastern territories as mere spoils of the Ottoman Empire, to be divided between France and Britain as booty, bargaining with one another for this bit or that, drawing lines and borders on their maps with little concern for the people and lands they were carving up. (266-267)
As Ahmed tries to deconstruct the idea of Arabness, she makes some unpleasant discoveries. For one, the concept is not a homegrown one: uniting so many different countries under one banner is the brainchild of two colonial powers who want to keep Middle Eastern countries from cutting into their economic markets.
This fact reinforces Ahmed's uneasiness with the designation "Arab"—it simply doesn't reflect her ethnic heritage. Instead, it is an identity of convenience for the outside world.