How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
Such thoughts live on and shape how we see our past, even when we know them to be products of false perceptions and old, unexamined prejudices—prejudices even against our own kind and the most cherished people in our lives. (24)
Ahmed responds here to a memory of her mother. It seems that whenever she thinks of her mom, she can't stifle the snotty thought that "Mother wasn't a professional anything!" She regrets that her 15-year-old self was so harsh—especially since this negative response remains with her as an adult. While she has changed her assessment of her mother with time and a greater understanding of life, her default criticism is a lot harder to put to rest.
Quote #5
And I know now that the point is to look back with insight and without judgment, and I know now that it is of the nature of being in this place, this place of convergence of histories, cultures, ways of thought, that there will always be ways to understand what we are living through, and that I will never come to a point of rest or of finality in my understanding. (25-26)
Ahmed acknowledges that her beloved father, with his great admiration of European civ, had a "colonized consciousness"—an inner belief that everything Egyptian could never be as completely awesome as anything British.
Though this understanding is painful for her (she totally adored her dad and emulated him), she knows that her purpose in writing isn't to judge her parents for past actions, but to seek the truth about her personal identity and her home culture.
Quote #6
I remember it as a time, that era of my childhood, when existence itself seemed to have its own music—a lilt and a music that made up the ordinary fabric of living. There was the breath of the wind always, and the perpetual murmur of the trees; the call of the karawan that came in the dusk, dying with the dying light; the reed-piper playing his pipe in the dawn... (47)
Music, for Ahmed, is more than just about pleasure or entertainment. It usually evokes a person, place, or emotion from her past. And it's often closely linked with a sense of longing and a quest for meaning. This recollection paints Ahmed's life at Ain Shams as a dreamlike, almost mystical time that would somehow shape her identity and purpose in life. It's without a doubt a positive memory, revealing her fondness for the meditative atmosphere of her childhood home.