How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #7
My athletic career came to an end when I was entered by our school in the Cairo competitions and won the hundred-meter dash, setting a new Cairo record. My picture appeared in the paper. My parents, or more exactly my mother, feeling that it was not at all appropriate for a photo of me in shorts to appear in the paper, decreed that I could no longer compete in games—in any public venue, at any rate. (151)
Ahmed learns some harsh lessons about what it means to be female in her society. Prior to this incident, she's learned from her mother that her life is not as valuable as her sexual purity—and this event reaffirms that for her. No matter how awesome Ahmed's athletic talent is, it has to take a backseat to the need for modesty and the protection of her reputation as a young woman. It's interesting to note that it's her mother who usually acts to ensure that Ahmed stays within the boundaries drawn for women by their society.
Quote #8
In childhood, I'd picked up this sense of contempt for women, and in particular for the women around me—just from the air, from the books we read, the films we saw, the intangible attitudes at school and those in the world around me. It is quite clear to me that my mother distinctly enters the fabric of my own memories in the negative. "She was not a professional anything," I wrote earlier in these pages, remembering my own inarticulate, internalized contempt as a youngster. (193)
Ahmed describes how she learned a hatred of women (so also of herself) just from living in her society. It's especially apparent in her feelings toward her mother, which are almost always ones of anger and contempt. Ahmed distances herself from her mother's version of femininity by focusing on her professional ambitions—to work and excel in a predominantly male field. It is a mind-blowing admission by Ahmed, however, that she has actual contempt for women (at least as a child/teen), especially since she'll dedicate her career to women's studies.
Quote #9
If women had degrees in engineering or some such subject, he asked, would they be willing to be the servants of society? If we, the committee, did what the locals said they wanted, the entire basis of society, which rested on women's role in the family and, frankly, on their being willing to be the servants to men, would be destroyed. (277)
Ahmed runs up against a stunning level of sexism when she serves on a committee tasked with reforming the education system in Abu Dhabi. This particular point of view was held by the chair of the committee, a non-local Arab man who clearly had no intention of improving the quality of women's education.
Ahmed tells us that his point of view doesn't reflect the values of the local culture—as voiced by both men and women—which very enthusiastically supported the expansion of women's education. At issue: local people believed in the value of women and their ability to contribute to society, whereas the more formally educated and supposedly "enlightened" non-local men didn't.