How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
… my inheritance includes this gift, the gift of inventing new parents for myself whenever necessary. The power of giving birth to fathers and mothers: which Ahmed wanted and never had. (1.8.6)
If parents aren't just the people who give birth to you, what makes a parent?
Quote #5
That was how, thirty hours before my birth, my father de-monstrated that he, too, longed for fictional ancestors... how he came to invent a family pedigree that, in later years, when whisky had blurred the edges of his memory and djinn-bottles came to confuse him, would obliterate all traces of reality... and how, to hammer his point home, he introduced into our lives the idea of the family curse. (1.8.17)
Not only can you imagine families, but you can imagine family curses, too. Only, Ahmed wanted to curse other people, and this curse affects all of his family members.
Quote #6
'All the time,' Padma wails angrily, 'you tricked me. Your mother, you called her; your father, your grandfather, your aunts. What thing are you that you don't even care to tell the truth about who your parents were? You don't care that your mother died giving you life? That your father is maybe still alive somewhere, penniless, poor? You are a monster or what?' (1.8.50)
What do you think? Is Saleem a monster for not caring about Vanita and Wee Willie Wikie, or what?