Key Quotes Reluctant Fundamentalist Flashcards
Changez’s Americanised perspective?
“Did not think myself Pakistani but as an Underwood Samson trainee.”
Prejudices about Pakistanis? (Two)
“Fucking Arab.”
“You should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists.”
Other prejudices?
“I was well liked as an exotic acquaintance.”
“It was your bearing that allowed me to identify you.”
“Do not be frightened by my beard, I am a lover of America.”
Erica’s infatuation with otherness?
“So what’s Pakistan like?”
“I love when you talk about where you come from… you become alive.”
Exclusiveness of America? (Two)
“I realised I was being ushered into an insider’s world.”
“I was in four and a half years, never and American; I was immediately a New Yorker.”
Deterioration of Erica? (Two)
=> “When I first saw Erica… so stunningly regal she was.”
=> “A diminished Erica, not the vivid confident woman I knew but a pale, nervous creature who could almost have been a stranger.”
American dream? / Reality? (Three)
“Invited into the ranks of meritocracy.”
“The economy’s an animal.”
“I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American Empire.”
Princeton? Experience and architecture? (Three)
=> “Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible.”
=> “This is a beautiful campus.”
=> “Younger” BUT “Acid treatment and ingenious stonemasonry look older.”
Other architecture?
=> “Surely New York by night must be one of the greatest sights in the world.”
=> “Yes Manilla had its slums… but Manilla’s glittering skyline and walled enclaves for the ultra rich were unlike anything I had seen in Pakistan.”
