p94-95: " 'It is a pity about this,' she says. 'Perhaps I could make you a kameez of this, but you probably don't wear Pakistani clothes these days.' The words are spoken with the back turned; the listener is being tested, to see if she can guess what expression of the face accompanies the words, as a lover would suddenly close both eyes and demand to know what color they are: the right answer would be a proof of love."
p103: " 'Yes I know, you've told us. But I think there is a thing called a 'griddle' in Britain that resembles Pakistani baking-irons, and of course the Mexican tortillas are cooked on—'
'If we'd had you to guide us during those early years we would have done things differently, and I apologize if I repeat something I've already told you but I don't lead a life as varied as yours.' It wouldn't tip the scales on a pin, the amount by which a comment has to fall short from the ideal in the listener's head for it to be regarded an affront, an offence—a crime. 'If I tell you something every day it's because I relive it every day. Every day—wishing I could rewrite the past—I relive the day I came to this country where I have known nothing but pain.' Immediately after taking it off the iron, Kaukab polishes the chapati with a pat of butter that melts and is propelled forward on the hot surface like a snail secreting the lubricating slickness to move on as it goes."
p112: "Equipped with that knitting needle she had shut herself in here after discovering herself pregnant—the smell of rust in her nostrils and the taste of iron behind her teeth and the gums seeming to grow richer every second, as though chains to bind her were being forged within her—and had realized only then that she did not know how to proceed. How exactly was it done? In the end her courage had failed her and she had sat trembling. A legal termination at a clinic was an impossibility: her only source of money was her parents and they would not have allowed her to have an abortion, and would have used the pregnancy to renew their efforts to make her return to her husband."
The passage about Mah-Jabin on page 112 reveals the contradictions about Mah-Jabin's relationship with her parents. She is dependent on them financially, but she cannot depend on them to know what is best for her: They would use her pregnancy as a reason to force her to go back to her husband. Although they do not know the extent to which her husband is abusive, Kaukab and Shamas probably do not want to know exactly how awful their daughter's circumstances are in Pakistan; Kaukab wants to believe that Mah-Jabin's life will not be better until she is settled down with him. Kaukab's rigidity and Mah-Jabin's impossible situation seem to bind her from the inside out, like chains; she cannot escape her family.
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