One of the
things I found most interesting about Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West was how it tells the story of Saeed and Nadia’s love,
friendship and journey together as refugees without ever melding the two
characters into a singular hermaphroditic blob like so many “love stories” can
sometimes tend to do. Nadia and Saeed are both individually developed prior to
their relationship, and they continue to be developed throughout the course of
the novel in their perspectives, expressing the beliefs, emotions, and concerns
of each character independently from the other while also allowing them to grow
very close and find intimacy and vulnerability with each other.
While
reading the novel, their journey as refugees is fairly explicitly something
that they venture on together, something that they are able to lean on each
other during, and find solace, comfort and security in each other during. And
yet it still feels like simultaneously a journey they were taking alone. Almost
immediately when they get to Greece things start to change between them, and
while they were still very caring and affectionate, their individual experiences
felt very lonely, and isolating even though they were together nearly every
second of the day. I can’t relate personally to the experience of being a
refugee, I can only imagine, but from what I read and hear, and from novels
like this I think it’s understandable that even travelling with someone you
love you could feel extremely isolated.
There is a painting
by Maria Kreyn called Alone Together,
and it shows a man and woman embracing with the man’s face resting on her neck,
while the woman looks away with a downcast expression on her face. It looks
sad, and completely understandable because it seems to capture this human
desire to hold onto the parts of your life that aren’t working, that aren’t
helpful or even healthy simply because they are familiar and therefore
comforting. It’s hard to let go of these things because they can represent a
time, a place, or a version of yourself that’s gone, and that you aren’t ready
to let go of yet. Nadia and Saeed’s relationship was the only thing they had
left of their country after they left. They lost their families, their homes,
almost all of their things, their friends, their jobs, and they even lost each
other because the second they left they started changing. The relationship, the
love, and the friendship they shared was the only thing left, it was the only
rock they had in the loneliness, uncertainty, fear and anger of their
experiences as refugees.
Because of
Nadia and Saeed’s very opposing viewpoints on religion, stereotypical gender
roles, other migrants who don’t come from their country, and even the ethical and
moral questions surrounding how a country should treat incoming refugees, a
very clear divide comes between them early in their journey that only increases
as the novel goes on. However, they continue to cling to one another throughout
the novel despite the growing awareness that they are no longer in love, and the
growing stability and acceptance of refugees in the world Hamid created, they
continue to be almost unable to let go of each other until the very end, and
even then, it’s reluctant. Nadia feels like she must keep her promise to Saeed’s
father that she would stay with Saeed until he was out of danger, but more than
this their desire to stay together seems to stem from a moment in Saeed’s head
just before they leave London for Marin in which Hamid writes he was angry at
himself for being resentful towards some of her actions and beliefs “since he
believed he loved her” (187). It doesn’t say that he loved her, or that he even
wanted to love her (although it says this at other times), it says he believed
it, he needed to believe it just as she needed to believe it because to accept that
they were no longer in love would force them to acknowledge that they had
changed from the people they were when they were in love. The trauma of leaving
behind everything they knew in their old lives was already exceedingly
difficult for Nadia and Saeed, so to have to accept that they had changed as
people and lost the love that helped them get through everything thus far would
be to face a huge loss to not only their lives but their self-concept.
Hamid illustrates a subtle but powerful
depiction of what it’s like to leave and lose everything as refugees fleeing to
new countries, each one only slightly less hostile than the last. Nadia and
Saeed hold onto each other not because it’s who they are or who they will be,
but because it’s who they once were and leaving behind an old self, shedding it
like an extra skin is perhaps the most difficult loss.
No comments:
Post a Comment