How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #1
I grew up in the last days of the British Empire. My childhood fell in that era when the world's "imperialism" and "the West" had not yet acquired the connotations they have today—they had not yet become, that is, mere synonyms for "racism," "oppression," and "exploitation." (5)
British colonial occupation of Egypt has a major impact on Ahmed's life and how she thinks about her identity and place in the world. She's had the fortune to come into the world at a momentous time in Egyptian history—just as colonial rule ends and a revolutionary government attempts to reshape the nation. The absence of language to discuss imperialism and racism doesn't mean that Ahmed didn't experience the fallout from these things. It means, as she will later explain, that her consciousness had not yet awakened to these issues. That was to end pretty quickly.
Quote #2
They came in, the revolutionaries, with high ideals and good intentions. They simply wanted, they said, to cleanse society and bring the corruption with which it was rife to an end. The revolution, they said, would sweep out the old corrupt order and end the injustices of class oppression that had forever plagued this country, with its extremes of wealth and poverty. (11)
You know that old saying about the path to hell being paved with good intentions? With this in mind, we can sense how ominous Ahmed's tone is here. While Egyptians might have supported the revolutionary government, there is a sense that her fellow countrymen are about to get more than they bargained for. And yet the problems of her country are real: wealth inequality, corruption, grinding poverty. A teenage Ahmed finds herself drawn to the rhetoric of the new government as her social conscience blossoms. But in the end, concern for social justice seems like a veneer for a good old-fashioned power grab.
Quote #3
[...] for Nasser, the dam's very size and grandiosity was emblematic of Egypt's rebirth as a great nation, a nation venturing once more, as in ancient days, on monumental projects—projects as grand as the pyramids. That was how the dam was touted in the press in those days: it was new Egypt's great pyramid. For Father, it was Egypt's great disaster. (19)
Nasser (second president of Egypt) inherited a country full of suffering from a lack of national identity and personal power under the grip of British rule. In order to solidify his own power—and to thumb his nose at the Brits—Nasser needed to do something big. Literally.
But Ahmed's father knew that Nasser's pet project would have devastating ecological effects and could potentially make the lives of peasants who depended on the Nile waters' annual flooding even more miserable. This situation is an early lesson for Ahmed about political will and agenda and how it always trumps what's good in the long run.