How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"What have you done? You had beautiful hair, man. All curly and wild. It was gorgeous."
Irie couldn't say anything for a moment. She had not considered the possibility that she looked anything less than terrific. (11.187-188)
Why does Irie think that pretty much any look is better than her natural look?
Quote #8
"Well, Captain Jones, it would be an honor if you would lead the expedition up the hill."
"Captain—what? Blimey, no, you've got it arse-ways-up," said Archie, escaping the magnetic force of the eye, and refocusing on himself, dressed in Dickinson-Smith's shiny buttoned uniform.
"I'm not a bloody—"
"The lieutenant and I would be pleased to take charge," broke in a voice behind him. "We've been out of the action for quite a while. It is about time we got back in the thick of it, as they say."
Samad had stepped out onto the front steps silently as a shadow, in another of Dickinson-Smith's uniforms and with a cigarette hanging casually off his lower lip like a sophisticated sentence. He was always a good-looking boy, and dressed in the shiny buttons of authority this was only accentuated; in the sharp daylight, framed by the church door, he cut quite an awesome figure. (5.202-206)
Archie and Samad look as though they are officers, and so the Russian soldiers assume that they are, despite their youth. Samad is eager to let them believe this, as he feels he is meant to be an officer. Being mistaken for being important is, sadly, as close as Samad will ever get to this kind of power.
Quote #9
Two sons. One invisible and perfect, frozen at the pleasant age of nine, static in a picture frame while the television underneath him spewed out all the s*** of the eighties—Irish bombs, English riots, transatlantic stalemates—above which mess the child rose untouchable and unstained, elevated to the status of ever-smiling Buddha, imbued with serene Eastern contemplation; capable of anything, a natural leader, a natural Muslim, a natural chief—in short, nothing but an apparition. A ghostly daguerreotype formed from the quicksilver of the father's imagination, preserved by the salt solution of maternal tears. This son stood silent, distant, and was "presumed well," like one of Her Majesty's colonial island outposts, stuck in an eternal state of original naiveté, perpetual prepubescence. This son Samad could not see. And Samad had long learned to worship what he could not see. (9.42)
It's easier for Samad to imagine Magid as he wants Magid to be, rather than as he is. When Magid returns to London, Samad's image of him is shattered. In the end, Magid disappoints his pops just as much as Millat does. But while he's away, Magid gets to be his perfect, unchanging, photograph-self.