How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I went outside with the blood all over me and saw my mother, father, older and younger brother. They were all smiling as if nothing had happened, as if we had been together all this time.
"Sit down, Mr. Troublesome," my father said.
"Don't mind him," my mother chuckled.
I sat down facing my father, but couldn't eat with them. My body had gotten numb, and my family didn't seem to notice that I was covered with blood. It began to rain and my family ran into the house, leaving me outside. I sat in the rain for a while, letting it clean the blood off me. I got up to go into the house, but it wasn't there. It had disappeared. I was looking around confused when I woke up from the dream.
I had fallen off my bed.
I got up and went outside and sat on the stoop looking into the night. I was still confused, as I couldn't tell whether I had had a dream or not. It was the first time I had dreamt of my family since I started running away from the war. (17.57-62)
Ishmael's dream is disturbing, but comforting, too. His family doesn't see the blood on him. They still love him, no matter what he's had to do in the name of staying alive. They still see him as the boy they knew.
Quote #8
"I feel as if there is nothing left for me to be alive for," I said slowly. "I have no family, it is just me. No one will be able to tell stories about my childhood." (18.1)
Ishmael tells this to Esther as he's slowly being rehabilitated. In a way, he's right, without a connection to his family, what does he matter? Who will remember him? He's afraid he'll have no connection to his past. Esther encourages him to find family in other places. Like with her, for instance.
Quote #9
"Welcome, my son," she said. She was a short woman with very dark skin, round cheekbones, and bright eyes. My uncle didn't have children of his own, so he raised the children of family members as his own. There were four of them—Allie, the oldest one; Matilda; Kona; and Sombo, the littlest, who was six years old. They had all stopped doing their chores and came onto the verandah to hug their "brother," as my uncle explained my relation to them.
"It is good to have another boy in the family," Allie said after he hugged me. (18.72-73)
Ishmael is nervous about how he will fit in with his uncle's family, but they embrace him as if he were their long-lost brother, which, in a way, he actually is. Family really does mean unconditional love. It reminds Shmoop of the poet Robert Frost who wrote that "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Sounds like Ishmael felt right at home with his uncle.