Carly Mayer

ENGL 3099
Dr. Christopher White

Exit West- Essay 3

In the world, we are constantly seeing problems arise for migrants and refugees. In 2017,

the novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid was published. This is two years after “the estimates of

refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons from Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid’s

country of origin, reached 2,184,574 people.” (Lagji 218) In our reality, there was a crisis, and

Hamid had the privilege to publish his book shortly after, on a topic regarding migration and

refugees. Though Exit West was rewarded countless awards for its prose and story, many critics

took issue with its acknowledgement to reality. Hamid did not represent refugees properly when

the world was desperately seeking representation. Through the use of doors for travel, and a

summary that “we are all migrants through time,”(Hamid 209) Hamid failed to accurately speak

for refugees.

In numerous interviews, Hamid spoke on how he wanted his novel to reflect the future

and “that movement itself could be the basis for future solidarity and feelings of belonging is in

itself revolutionary.”(Lagji 228) In this perspective, his version of migration and unity is a goal

for the world’s future. However, this can be seen as negligent of what is happening in the

present. We are left to question if an author should be held responsible for inaccurately

portraying refugees’ journeys and migration. Hamid has had three successful novels before Exit

West. He has a strong voice that can make a change. The change needed for our world is not

centered around what we hope for the future, but what we can do for those struggling in the

present. His novel creates new ideas and perspectives but “ones that counter the moral blindness

that Bauman sees as part and parcel of the migration crisis.”(Naydan 448) Though Hamid is
alluding to the current crisis, he is creating a novel centered around the journey of Saaed and

Nadin’s relationship, and not the journey of migration.

The story of Exit West follows Saeed and Nadia in their journey through time and self

discovery. Though the story is centered around refugees and migration, Saeed and Nadia seem

slightly removed from it all. When the amount of refugees are growing in their own city, the

refugees are thought of “as a collective, with no adjectives or other description assigned to them,

and they are marginalised by the very syntax of the prose.”(Perfect 190) Hamid works hard to

distinguish Saeed and Nadia from the refugees, referring to them as “others”(Hamid 26) and

mentioning how Saeed and Nadia “had to be careful when making turns not to run over an

outstretched arm or leg.”(27) Many of the mentions as to what is happening to their city seems to

be considered an inconvenience to them. Later, when they are unable to see each other due to

curfew, they treat it as a long distance relationship and act annoyed, though look forward to the

longing. They brush over the actual horrors to focus on how it interacts with their relationship.

The novel wants us to follow along with two characters who become refugees whilst it “begins

with those two characters being themselves unable to empathise with refugees.”(Perfect 191) It

does not seem like a good way to achieve empathy from the reader. It also forces the reader to

shift their mind to something that in the grand scheme of things is irrelevant.

Of course, with new love, it feels that this is the only thing of importance, however it is

Hamid’s role to direct the narrative. In Chapter 3 of Exit West, it discusses the assault that

happened on the stock exchange. We read how each character was affected by the assault. Their

work is all questioned and interrupted, prayers are said, and how the characters face regrets. This

is worth two pages, and the next section returns to Nadia and Saeed’s relationship and how “they

held hands beneath the table.”(Hamid 53) The immediate shift is jarring and confusing for the
reader. It seems to downplay the horrible things their city is going through. Part of that is

Hamid’s style. He makes quick switches of narratives and storylines, however in this case it was

insensitive.

Later in the novel, when both Saeed and Nadia’s neighborhoods had fallen to the

militants, they looked for solace in each other. There is nothing wrong with this, however Saeed

says, “‘The end of the world can be cozy at times.’”(83) After Hamid made a detailed description

of everything that was going wrong in their neighborhood, he diminishes what he said by

following it with a line of text like this.

Hamid includes many details and descriptions throughout the novel, but he often lacks

the personal details when it comes to describing the other refugees. When Nadia and Saeed

arrive at their first refugee camp, Hami describes the refugees as “people of many colors”, “other

people”, and “in this group.”(Hamid 106) It is very generalized and vague. In most of Hamid’s

descriptions of refugees, “the refugees tellingly described here as a collection of body parts

rather than as human beings.”(Perfect 191) They appear to be used as ‘extras’ to tell a story, not

something vital to education and history. The syntax that Hamid uses in his descriptions of the

refugees show the distinction between Nadia and Saeed and the migrants. Their conjecture about

the refugees “whose actions can be concretely reported but whose thoughts and emotions – and,

particularly chillingly, whose possible deaths – can only be speculated about.”(Perfect 191)

Hamid’s style of quick moments gives the readers the feeling that these details are brushed over

and not properly acknowledged. This gives the impression they are unimportant to Nadia and

Saeed, as well as to the reader.

Hamid’s main objective with this novel is to show “that movement itself could be the

basis for future solidarity and feelings of belonging is in itself revolutionary.”(Lagji 228) This is
the most controversial point of his novel. He tries to create unity by saying that all people are

migrants. “To insist that all refugees are human beings is vital; to insist that all human beings are

refugees, however, is wrongheaded.”(199) In today’s world, a large debate was about the “Black

Lives Matter” movement. When this movement began to sweep the nation, many people returned

with “All Lives Matter.” BLM was never saying that black lives mattered more than other lives,

but it was giving a voice to a group that did not have one previously. By saying “All Lives

Matter” it was undermining everything that BLM stood for. Hamid saying everyone is a migrant

in one way or another, it undermines what actual migrants have had to deal with.

Hamid uses doors to create a fantasy idea where people are able to travel by the doors to

new cities. This is how we follow Nadia and Saeed’s journey. The readers also read the stories of

numerous other people using the doors. In Nadia and Saeed’s first experience with the door, they

question if they were tricked and that “this was the final afternoon of their lives.”(Hamid 102)

They finally were given the opportunity to walk through the door and described the passage as

being “both like dying and like being born.”(Hamid 104) These descriptions are probably the

closest Hamid gets to accurately depicting the life of a refugee. The use of the doors “depicts

migrants not as illegitimate or illegal but as individuals associated with that magic and

beauty.”(Naydan 446) Their journey is seen as mystical and they are shown to a new life in a

camp. Hamid’s choice of using doors as magical passages skips over the most important part of a

refugee’s story. There is no story in their journey of how they got there, and their fear of the door

only lasts one page. The biggest controversy with the doors is that no one is killed in their

passage, “whereas tens of thousands have died trying to make their way to Europe”(Perfect 196)

in the real world. The doors take away any risk that is involved with real travel that migrants

have to endure. The magical way that Hamid’s characters travel from cities excludes “the jarring
experience of transition and sudden uprooting that attends traumatic migration.”(Lagji 225)

These lacking details can direct the readers to misunderstand what migration really is. Hamid

describes the “adjustment to this new world was difficult indeed, but for some it was also

unexpectedly pleasant.”(Hamid 173) Hamid never sticks with the negative. Any time there is a

difficult situation or a hard moment, he reveals optimism.

Though Hamid has experience in migration himself, he inaccurately portrays it in his

novel Exit West. He creates a story centralized on Nadia and Saeed who live in a world of

migration. In the reading of this novel, it is near impossible not to connect it to the crisis in the

real world. There are millions of refugees every single year. With the recent take over of the

Taliban, it is difficult not to picture the babies being handed off to strangers in hopes of escaping

their unsafe land. Hamid lost the chance to make a difference with his novel. His fantastical

doors create an unreliable narrative for what migrants are truly facing. The use of the door “risks

negating the extraordinarily hazardous, frequently traumatic, and often deadly nature of the

journeys undertaken by displaced people.” (Perfect 196) These journeys are what a novel should

be centered around. Hamid focuses on the journey through time, in observance of Saeed and

Nadia’s relationship. By doing this, we lose the importance of what is going on around them.

Any time something negative or traumatic happens in their life, the reader views how it changes

and affects their relationship. The perspective that all people are migrants feels forced and

untrue. If this novel was written in a different political climate, Hamid’s goals would be sound.

Unity is obviously an objective of all people, but it is not what people need to hear during a time

where immediate change is necessary. Looking at the novel with an extrinsic approach, it seems

insensitive and inconsiderate of migrants and refugees. Though it was not Hamid’s intention, it
does not negate the fact that people have been offended and upset with this novel because of

these reasons.
 Works Cited

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West: A Novel. Riverhead Books, 2018.

Lagji, Amanda. “Waiting in Motion: Mapping Postcolonial Fiction, New Mobilities, and

Migration through Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.” Mobilities, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, pp.

218–32. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, doi:10.1080/17450101.2018.1533684.

Naydan, Liliana M. “Digital Screens and National Divides in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit

West.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 51, no. 3, 2019, pp. 433–51.

Perfect, Michael. “‘Black Holes in the Fabric of the Nation’: Refugees in Mohsin

Hamid’sExit West.” Journal for Cultural Research, vol. 23, no. 2, 2019, pp. 187–201.

Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group