How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #1
We too live our lives haunted by loss, we too, says Rumi, remember a condition of completeness that we once knew but have forgotten that we ever knew. The song of the reed and the music that haunts our lives is the music of loss, of loss and remembrance. (5)
In Ahmed's story, memory is a crucial though slippery companion to her writing. Should she include things as she remembers them, from a child's perspective? Or should she "improve" her memories with the understanding she's gained over the years?
By using Rumi's take on the sad sound of the reed, Ahmed helps us to understand that memories are complex things that sometimes need both the clarity of original experience and the wisdom of life experience to be woven into a meaningful story. The process, as Ahmed finds out, can be difficult and heartbreaking.
Quote #2
That's how it was in the beginning, how it was to come to consciousness in this place and this time and in a world alive, as it seemed, with the music of being.
And yet also, as I sit here now, in these halls, in this house of memory, it is not in those days and those moments that my story begins. (5)
Ahmed makes a fine distinction between having memories in her conscious mind and finding the place where her story actually begins. (Told you she's—say it in a Boston accent—wicked smaht.) For Ahmed, the music of her early days at Ain Shams leaves her with beautiful memories, but the shaping of her identity and future life depends on the interruption of the rhythm of her life. It's perhaps that very disruption that gives significance to the events that she chooses to recall in the pages that follow.
Quote #3
I think we heard Arabic music, too, as somehow lesser. It is probably for this reason that I do not now remember any, not a single one, of the songs my mother sang. She had a lovely voice. I remember how its sweetness arrested me, held me still. I remember other songs, other musics of childhood, but I can't recall even one of the lyrics my mother sang. (24)
Ahmed will speak later on in her book about the "uncounted costs of colonization" paid especially by her mother. A major cost is the erasure of memory that would normally be part of a special bond between mother and child.
Ahmed's loss of her mother's beautiful songs happens because they're in Arabic, a language spurned by children who prefer the language and culture of the colonial forces. It's an early choice that will leave Ahmed with regrets and a sense of yearning.