Like the two world wars and the effect they had on everyday
people trying to live everyday lives in the 20th century, one of the greater
crises happening in the 21st is the ongoing wars in the Middle East and the
effect there on normal people trying to live normal lives. Western media often focusing only on the drama,
violence, and terrorism, the lives of ordinary people who want no part of the
conflict get overlooked. That is, until
they start appearing on Western shores in search of help. Nailing this quotidian view in a fully human story
is Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 Exit West.
The cultural climate being what is in the West today, it’s
important to step in now and forestall any potential eye-rolling: ‘Here we go, another victim narrative…’ In the strictest sense of the expression, yes,
Exit West is a victim narrative, but
it’s a victim narrative in the same vein as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath—the American
classic. Prose and setting differ, but both
Steinbeck and Hamid attempt to portray ordinary humans caught up in
circumstances beyond their control who then try to retain a sense of normalcy and
survive. In Grapes, drought pushes the Joad family to leave Oklahoma for California,
and in Exit West it’s war that pushes
Saeed and Nadia to leave the Middle East for Europe. But neither group of characters is utterly
imprisoned by their circumstances. Each uses
what instinct and knowledge they have to attempt to carry on—to extend the
normalcy as best they can in a new setting.
Thus Exit West, like Grapes of Wrath, is not a bleeding heart
liberal narrative akin to a Fox News human interest story. Hamid restraining himself, it is a story
about real people (in the illustrative sense), nothing exaggerated or
overstated.
Nadia and Saeed are two 20-somethings living in an unnamed
Middle Eastern country. Nadia working at
an insurance company’s service desk and Saeed developing projects at an ad
agency, the two spend their time as other young people around the world
do—going out with friends, using social media, and spending time with their
families. Neither religious in any
strict sense of the word, they follow local custom in public but otherwise
pursue personal interests in private—Nadia even going so far as to live on her
own. The two meet at a function for
work, but the relationship is slow to evolve given Nadia’s perceived misgivings
about Saeed’s traditionalism. Eventually,
the two start forming a bond. But war
breaks out, and when an opportunity comes available, the couple make the decision
to trade bullets and bombs for the uncertainty of the West.
If anything, Exit West
is an abstract novel. From the unnamed
Middle Eastern country where Nadia and Saeed live to the mysterious doors that
open onto other countries and locations, Hamid rarely gives the reader
specifics to be able to identify which country, or which war, or which refugee boat
is the subject. This means there is
limited foothold to take discussion on the novel beyond the bounds of the
characters—which is the intent. Moreover, Saeed avoids any maudlin romance,
particularly in the latter part of the novel where cheapening/familiarizing the
plot could have distracted from the real issues; evolving as ours do, Nadia and
Saeed’s trajectories are both relatable and understandable. And the mysterious doors, well, some in the
“literary review scene” are buzzing about genre-this and genre-that. In reality, the doors are a simple literary
device that perform three basic functions: emphasizing the contrast between
locations, being delimiters of phases in Nadia and Saeed’s flight, and lastly, a
means of getting characters quickly between points. After all, passage from Boston to London, for
example, would be a far blunter affair reduced to a singular door.
And the abstract strategy is highly successful. Nadia and Saeed become the complete focus of Exit West. Struck with only the spotlight of their
emotions and concerns, the reader is placed in their shoes, and by default
comes to understand their situation, and by further abstraction, the situation
of those in similar situations. Comparing
to another recent novel which some purport addresses contemporary social and
political issues, Colson Whitehead’s The
Underground Railroad and its portrayal of the historical injustices of
slavery, the reader does not have the same sense of understanding given Whitehead’s
inability to bridge the gap between then and now in relevant fashion. Rather than being analogous to current affairs,
its lens is focused on the past. Exit West examines the now. Hamid creates a palpable sense of the real—of
documentary footage coming to life in human form on the page. People like Nadia and Saeed can be found walking
in contemporary Western society, giving their story a true sense of relevancy
that could overlay any number of real world scenarios involving war in the
Middle East and the resulting refugees and immigration issues in Europe and
America.
In the end, Exit West
is likely the best novel written on the topic of refugees and illegal
immigration as it relates to the current situation in the Middle East. Hamid wholly avoiding the causes of the conflict
and the minority to blame, and instead focusing on the ordinary people caught
in the crossfire, the novel tells of human realities and the role the West
plays in their personal situations. Humanizing
what many in the West often perceive as a faceless mob (or at worst a horde of
terrorists just waiting to sneak into the West to kill), the novel also provides
an excellent counter-point to a lot of media frenzy and twitter opinions indirectly
expressing fear. To be fair, Hamid does
avoid topics like what obligations the West has or doesn’t have to help people
fleeing Middle Eastern conflicts or the problems inherent to conservative
Muslim belief. But in the very least the
novel gives Middle Eastern refugees faces, faces just like people in the West grew
up with despite that the religion or culture are different, not to mention forces the reader to ask the question: what would you do if you were Saeed or Nadia?. One of the best novels of 2017…
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