A Border Passage Quizzes

Think you’ve got your head wrapped around A Border Passage? Put your knowledge to the test. Good luck — the Stickman is counting on you!
Q. "'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). With whom is Ahmed fighting here?


Her mother
Her father
Mr. Price
Miss Nabih
Q. "I was fifteen. Like many girls that age, I was sure of one thing: I did not want to be like my mother. I was sure that I wasn't like her and would never grow up to be like her. I didn't want to think we were alike in anything, let alone in our deepest hearts' desires..." (74). What is the desire that Ahmed shares with her mother in this instance?


Her desire for a higher education
Her desire to marry a wealthy man
Her desire for religious piety
Her desire to become a writer
Q. : "I found myself living, just as I had in Alexandria, in a place where women, presiding over the young in their charge, were the authorities" (181). What is this place?


Zatoun
Girton College
Ain Shams
Abu Dhabi
Q. "Huge demonstrations held on Balfour Day in 1945 and again in 1947 spilled over into violent attacks on the Jews and now on any other group deemed 'foreign'" (260). What does Balfour Day commemorate?


The creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine
The expulsion of Jews from Egypt
The withdrawal of the British from Egypt
The establishment of the Jewish community in Cairo
Q. "[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" (20). Why does the government want to harass Ahmed's father?


He hasn't paid his taxes in years
He opposed Nasser's pet engineering project
He campaigned for Nasser's ousting
He wants to immigrate to England