How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
To the right, looking from the road, the World Trade Centre was a huge, modern, air-conditioned building. It was filled to three levels with shops, and displays of jewels, silks, carpets, and intricate craftworks. To the left was the slum, a sprawling ten acres of wretched poverty with seven thousand tiny huts, housing twenty-five thousand of the city's poorest people. (1.8.52)
Once again we get the juxtaposition of hyper-wealth and uber-poverty. (Yeah, we like prefixes too; thanks for noticing.) The World Trade Center stands for international commerce and a cosmopolitan, globalized society. The slum, though, stands for what that society is built upon.
Quote #8
"There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor," Abdullah said, in his quiet tone. (2.9.133)
Abdullah thinks that the generosity of the poor is a beautiful "act of faith." Why would that be? It's definitely beautiful, as all generosity is, but there must be something that the very poor believe in, have faith in, for him to say such a thing. Perhaps it's that their generosity will someday be returned to them.
Quote #9
Known as pavement dwellers, they were people who made homes for themselves on every available strip of unused land and any footpath wide enough to support their flimsy shelters, while still permitting pedestrian traffic. [...] When the monsoon struck, their position was always dangerous and sometimes untenable, and many of them sought refuge in the slums. (2.12.91)
Is Lin serious right now? There are people who are so poor, so bad off, that they have to come to the slum to save themselves? This is bleak. The pavement dwellers make the slum, which is periodically burned down or knocked over by government workers, seem permanent.