I have been totally lacking inspiration lately, but today I finished “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid and really wanted to tell y’all about it.
We have our two protagonists, Saeed and Nadia, two young people living in a country where religious militants are wreaking havoc and increasingly making life untenable. (The country is never named but I imagined it to be Pakistan, which I believe is where Hamid is from; of course it could just as easily be Libya or Syria.) Nadia is an unconventional woman, estranged from her family and living on her own in a culture where that is very much not the norm. She wears a hijab, but not because she’s pious; she tells Saeed it is “so men don’t fuck with [her]”. Saeed falls in love with her wildness and as their city becomes more and more dangerous, they spend more and more time together.
All over the world unrest is thick and rising and people are anxious to leave for what they imagine will be more peaceable climes. There is word of certain special doors that act as a portal between one’s current location and another faraway one, and desperate people take advantage to try to start a new life elsewhere. Saeed and Nadia decide to do this, after the death of Saeed’s mother and the burning down of Nadia’s apartment, though it is wrenching for Saeed to leave his father alone.
The first door takes the couple to Mykonos, Greece, where they are among many other fellow migrants escaping turbulent nations. However, in Mykonos and in every locale thereafter, “nativists” are not exactly welcoming of the influx and make their displeasure well known in both political and violent ways.
Nadia and Saeed travel from Mykonos to London and from London to the Bay Area of California. They have only each other throughout this time and have, of course, not even been a couple for very long; the premature intimacy takes its toll and the two begin to drift apart. Never before have I read the dissolution of a romantic relationship so beautifully bittersweet and heartbreaking and yet appropriate…appropriate in the sense that both characters know the relationship is dwindling and while it saddens them, they don’t try to prolong the inevitable and they don’t hurt each other any more than absolutely necessary. It’s the most mature breakup ever, and Hamid just paints it so gorgeously.
“Saeed and Nadia were loyal, and whatever name they gave their bond they each in their own way believed it required them to protect the other, and so neither talked much of drifting apart, not wanting to inflict a fear of abandonment, while also themselves quietly feeling that fear, the fear of the severing of their tie, the end of the world they had built together, a world of shared experiences in which no one else would share, and a shared intimate language that was unique to them…But while fear was part of what kept them together for those first few months in Marin, more powerful than fear was the desire that each see the other find firmer footing before they let go…”
I love that tenderness. Saeed and Nadia have been through so much together that all they want is safety and security for each other, however it comes, whether or not they remain a couple. And they each find it.
I enjoyed the dose of magical realism that the doors brought to the story. It was the only aspect that couldn’t be 100% “ripped from the headlines”, so to speak, in an otherwise highly topical book. Some people might find it too convenient of a device, but for me it emphasized the porousness of borders in today’s world and made me question what really makes a nation, and what really makes a native.
I gave it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads but would’ve gone for 4.5 if I could. (Are you on Goodreads? If not, why not? How do you keep track of everything you want to read and everything you have read???) It’s my 5th book of 2018 and easily beats out the other 4. Highly recommend.
It is somehow still January. I hope it’s been a good one for you.
Sconnie Molly 