How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He also felt - inexplicably - as though the old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return. Beneath the winter ice, it had been coldly neutral, but now there was no doubt; the years in Germany had returned him to a hostile environment. (1.1.8)
This scene occurs when Aadam Aziz returns to Kashmir after five years learning to be a doctor in Germany. Do you think the environment is really hostile? Or is it just that Aadam Aziz has changed?
Quote #2
And was knocked forever into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole. (1.1.9)
The perforated sheet! It rears its ugly head when Aadam Aziz is knocked into "that middle place." In other words, he becomes the other. Why does it show up here?
Quote #3
To the ferryman, the bag represents Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress. And yes, it has indeed taken possession of the young Doctor's mind; and yes, it contains knives, and cures for cholera and malaria and smallpox; and yes, it sits between doctor and boatman, and has made them antagonists. (1.1.42)
Seriously though, what is Tai's beef with the new Dr. Aziz? Why is he so against progress?
Quote #4
Tai once said: 'Kashmiris are different. Cowards, for instance. Put a gun in a Kashmiri's hand and it will have to go off by itself-he'll never dare to pull the trigger. We are not like Indians, always making battles.' Aziz, with Tai in his head, does not feel Indian. Kashmir, after all, is not strictly speaking a part of the Empire, but an independent princely state. (1.2.45)
A brief history note: Even though Kashmir is now part of India (mostly), it wasn't always that way. Before independence, Kashmir was an independent princely state. It wanted to stay that way after independence, but since Pakistan started invading them, they decided to side with India. So what Tai said might seem weird, but they were a totally different country at the time.
Quote #5
I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of a Muslim. Then I got a bruise on the chest that turned me into an Indian. (1.3.11)
These are the words of Aadam Aziz. He's saying that he started off as Kashmiri because Kashmir was an independent princely state. He wasn't much of a Muslim because he renounced religion when he broke his nose praying. The bruise on his chest that turned him into an Indian was the one that he got when he fell during the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It turned him into an Indian because, though before he'd felt that it wasn't his fight, he realized that independence was important for him too.
Quote #6
'He fills their heads with I don't know what foreign languages, whatsitsname, and other rubbish also, no doubt.' Daoud stirred pots and Reverend Mother cried, 'Do you wonder, whatsitsname, that the little one calls herself Emerald? In English, whatsitsname? That man will ruin my children for me. (1.3.18)
The Reverend Mother, a.k.a. Naseem Aziz, hates anything foreign. However, if she didn't want her children to be a little weird, she shouldn't have married Aadam Aziz, the guy who got run out of his home because of his foreignness.
Quote #7
'Brothers, sisters!' I broadcast, with a mental voice as uncontrollable as its physical counterpart, 'Do not let this happen! Do not permit the endless duality of masses-and-classes, capital-and-labour, them-and-us to come between us! We,' I cried passionately, 'must be a third principle, we must be the force which drives between the horns of the dilemma; for only by being other, by being new, can we fulfil the promise of our birth!' (2.18.8)
Saleem turns the concept of the other on its head by suggesting to the midnight's children that it's a good thing. We guess he's had a lot of practice since everyone in his family is a little foreign.
Quote #8
After my sixteenth birthday, I studied history at my aunt Alia's college; but not even learning could make me feel a part of this country devoid of midnight children, in which my fellow-students took out processions to demand a stricter, more Islamic society-proving that they had contrived to become the antitheses of students everywhere else on earth, by demanding more-rules-not-less. (2.22.13)
Why do you think that Saleem feels even more out of place in Pakistan than he does in India?
Quote #9
This, too, may be seen as an aspect of the detachment which came to afflict us all (except Jamila, who had God and country to keep her going)-a reminder of my family's separateness from both India and Pakistan. In Rawalpindi, my grandmother drank pink Kashmiri tea; in Karachi, her grandson was washed by the waters of a lake he had never seen. (2.23.9)
Salman Rushdie trivia: Rushdie's family is also Kashmiri, so it's not just a convenient plot point, but also autobiographical.
Quote #10
After which I began to see that the crime of Mary Pereira had detached me from two worlds, not one; that having been expelled from my uncle's house I could never fully enter the world-according-to-Picture-Singh (3.28.45)
Let's count the number of ways that Saleem is other. He's a poor kid raised by rich parents, a kid with mixed Indian and English heritage, his family is from Kashmir, he has magical powers… we could probably go on, but you get the point.