How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #4
[The Nasser government was] refusing to grant me the means to leave Egypt not because I'd had any significant political activity myself but because I was my father's daughter, and this was a way of further harassing my father. Captive in Egypt, unable to return to England to begin graduate studies as I had hoped, I began to think my own dream of pursuing a professional life was doomed to come to nothing. (21)
Ahmed spends eight years trying to get her paperwork in order to leave Cairo and begin her graduate studies at Cambridge. But the government, bent on punishing her dad for his opposition to the Aswan High Dam, tangles her plan in red tape. It's straight-up spite, meant to remind Ahmed's family who's in charge. This kind of political thuggery becomes the norm in Egypt, which strengthens Ahmed's resolve to leave.
Quote #5
I had grown up, I came to see, in a world where people, or at any rate my father, had not merely admired European civilization but had probably internalized the colonial beliefs about the superiority of European civilization. (25)
Ahmed speaks about the "colonized consciousness" in her work as the most insidious power play resulting from the prejudice and degradation dished out by an occupying nation. In her case, it means that even educated Egyptians—like Ahmed and her father—truly believed that European civilization was intrinsically better and should be more admired than their own. This is an internal colonialism, a quiet conquering of a local population from the inside out.
Quote #6
The British invested Egypt's resources in projects, such as irrigation and road construction, that brought prosperity, at least for some, and that developed the country as a producer of raw materials, in particular cotton, for British industries. But conversely, the British continued their policy of not allowing Egypt to develop as in industrial nation, a policy whose costs to the country are more obvious to us now than they were to the people of those earlier generations. And the British held back and even cut funding from other projects, such as education, essential for Egypt's long-term prosperity. (38)
The British had a well-developed strategy for keeping a colonized country dependent on them. In the case of Egypt, they made sure that they could exploit its natural resources but restrict the country's ability to use or process these riches for its own benefit. Egypt couldn't develop the industry necessary to take advantage of its own goods.