How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
And it was on these seats that I had my first taste of England: a chilled and soggy egg-salad sandwich wrapped in a triangle of plastic. It is the bread, in particular, that I remember, the way it dissolved on my tongue.
Never before had I experienced anything so determinedly tasteless, wet, and white. (2.105-106)
Hassan's first experience with Western civilization is a nasty tasteless piece of white bread. It's kind of the worst example of Western food, but it embodies the way he first feels about leaving the culture he knows.
Quote #2
Southall was the unofficial headquarters of Britain's Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi community, a flatland in the armpit of Heathrow Airport, its Broadway High Street a glittering string of Bombay jewelers, Calcutta cash-and-carries, and Balti curry houses. It was terribly disorienting, this familiar noise under the gray skies of England. (3.10)
Each of thee cultures may be beautiful on their own, but when you squish them together its unnatural and ugly. Or so it seems here. This is interesting when we consider the fact that ultimately Hassan figures out how to navigate a blended cultural existence.
Quote #3
I can still recall that wondrous first glimpse of Le Saule Pleureur. It was, to me, more stunning than the Taj in Bombay. [Everything fit perfectly, the very essence of understated European elegance that was so completely foreign to my own upbringing]. (4.125)
Hassan is mesmerized by this new world. He compares it to the splendor of India because that's all that he knows, even though France is totally different. In his eyes, it's the grandest thing he's ever laid eyes on.