Hi there!
So you're trying to do SSH from laptop > over wifi to the phone > from the phone down the USB cable to the Pi?
Is that right? That will never work as far as I know. A device connected to the wifi hotspot cannot communicate with a device connected to the phone by USB, they're using completely different protocols. Correct me if I am wrong anyone?
To get this to work you need to make the Pi also join the Wifi hotspot provided by the Android phone. Then the laptop and the Pi will both be on the same Wifi network and should be able to talk to each other directly.
You can get a little wifi dongle like
this one which will do the job.
I can see you may have a problem with getting onto the Pi to configure the Wifi settings though, that could be an issue. It would certainly help a lot if you could borrow a TV from someone just to get that bit done
Does your laptop have an Ethernet port? Like the one on the Pi? Because you could just get an
Ethernet cable and directly connect them together. I presume you’re using Windows on the laptop? You can share the wireless link, from the laptop to the Android phone, with the Pi over Ethernet. Check out this video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3V8LJIy8g