book notes: exit west by mohsin hamid
(my intention is to read as many books as possible this summer - and make a few notes-to-self for what i liked and disliked about each book, for reflection later, shelved into my inspiration library).
the book: is a story of two refugees in love — in an unnamed city at war — from the slow & sharp collapse of their normality to a life of constant movement — through doors — that lead them from one world to the next.
how it came to me: it was recommended to me by a friend in berlin. and. i’m in love with a refugee. fiction always seeks to help one understand reality, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives — and each other.
review: I read this book in three days and enjoyed it very much, like a clear as a love story and refugee story told in succinct and yet all-encapsulating prose (as in, he manages to say a lot in a single sentence, capture so much of the character’s very real and fragile humanity) such that the experience of leaving a home (again and again; and to be constantly unmoored) feels very real. tangible. and though it all - the nuanced act of loving each other. it feels like a story we all could have lived.
taste: light and cool and sweet with a soft bitterness — like rosewater with whisky
aftertaste: all books i manage to finish are books i would recommend. however, i didn’t quite feel satisifed by the ending - it seemed a bit hasty.
favorite passages (spoilers of course)
“but saeed’s father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and what he did not say was that he had come to a point in a parent’s life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one’s child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down, and threaten them with drowning, for the child is now stronger than the parent, and the circumstances are such that the utmost strength is required, and the arc of a child’s life only appears for a while to match the arc of the parent’s in reality one sits atop the other, a hill atop a hill, a curve atop a curve, and saeed’s father’s arc now needed to curve lower, while his son’s still curved higher, for with an old man hampering them these two young people were simply less likely to survive” (93).
“saeed’s father then summoned nadia into his room and spoke to her without saeed and sai that he was entrusting her with his son’s life, and she, whom he called daughter, must, like a daughter, not fail him, whom she called father, and she must see saeed through to safety, and he hoped she would one day marry his son and be called mother by his grandchildren, but this was up to them to decide, and all he asked was that she remain by saeed’s side until saeed was out of danger, and he asked her to promiae this to him, and she said she would promise only if saeed’s father came with them, and he said again that he could not, but that they must go, he said it softly, like a prayer, and she sat there with him in silence and the minutes passed, and in the end she promisead, and it was an easy promiae to make because she had at the time no thoughts of leaving saeed, but it was also a difficult one becausea in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as saeed and nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our livea those we leave behind” (94).
“saeed wanted to feel for nadia what he had always felt for nadia, and the potential loss of this feeling left him unmoored, adrift in a world where one could go anywhere but still find nothing… she was the entirety of his close family now, and he valued family above all, and when the warmth between them seemed lacking his sorrow was immense, so immense that he was uncertain whether all his losses had not combined into a core of loss, and in this core, this centre, the death of his mother and the death of his father and the possible death of this ideal self who had loved this woman so well were like a single death that only hard work and prayer might allow him to withstand” (188)
“neither much enjoyed catching unexpected glimpses of their former lover’s new existence online, and so they distanced themselves from each other on social networks, and while they wished to look out for each other, and to keep tabs on each toher, staying in touch took a toll on them, serving as an unsettling reminder of a life not lived, and also they grew less worried each for the other, less worried that the other would need them to be happy, and eventually a month went by without any contact, and then a year, and then a lifetime” (222)