Veranstaltungsberichte
Mohsin Hamid’s new Man Booker
nominated novel, Exit West, centers on
Saeed and Nadia — two young working
professionals in an unnamed city. Nadia
and Saeed live separate lives in a country
shuddering under a militant religious
civil war. Their lives are difficult.
He is
an observant Muslim dedicated to the
protection of his mother and father. She
is a secular woman willing to skirt the
oppression of religion and bigotry in
private but in public chooses to wear the
hijab as protection.
Saeed is attracted at first to the hijab
she wears, but the attraction builds
when he discovers she is not the
obedient observant woman she appears
at first to be. In the midst of an
increasingly terrifying war a liberating
romance develops between them. As
the bombs and the destruction move
closer, they look for ways out. They
learn of hidden doors that transport a
person instantaneously to any other
place, linking apartments and schools
in countries of suffering and oppression
with mansions and rooftops in places
of peace and abundance. The challenge
for Saeed and Nadia is to find a door.
Nadia and Saeed eventually make their
way to London, only to find it’s not the
safe haven they expect it to be, there
is hostility between the migrants and
the native-born, including attacks and
mob rule. The migrants are eventually
sectioned off in a ghetto with minimal
food and electricity called “Dark London”.
The book explores the couple’s struggle
to acclimatize to their new ‘home’.
With the ‘doors’ Mohsin Hamid in Exit
West creates a powerful metaphor that
helps us make sense of the changing
world we see around us today. There
are no descriptions of life-or-death
journeys in the backs of lorries or on
flimsy vessels. No middle passages. Just
the cognitive shock of having been
freshly transplanted to a tough new
environment. Whether you live in London
or Kampala, you encounter people who
are different and who are in difficult
circumstances. Some may be migrants
from war- torn countries with different
skin color, language, food and religion.
Others may simply be homeless who have
lost their income, their housing and any
sense of direction.
The experience of Nadia and Saeed
made me reflect on the refugee
situation in Uganda. The country
currently hosts almost 1.4 million
refugees, with more than 1 million
who fled South Sudan. Beyond this
massive displacement into northern
Uganda, many settlements in the
southwestern part of the country
are also seeing steady influxes
of refugees from the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi
and Rwanda. Refugees across
Uganda and the world face similar
challenges, women and girls,
frequently mentioned experiencing
disease, poverty, assault, sexual
violence, and intimidation, and
hostility from the host communities.
Hamid’s writing, at times poetic, is
sparse yet captivating, and this work
is a quick read. The magical realism,
is used well, fleetingly and adds to
the main message of the story, one’s
situation is not permanent, a sudden
change in circumstances could make
one a refugee or migrant and we
should remember to treat all people
with basic humanity, regardless of
their origin and circumstances.