Cadi Ayyad University

Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Marrakech

Department of English
Dr. Mohamed Louza
2023-2024

Guided Reading I
(7)
“Of Windows and Doors”
(2016)
1) Plot:
2) Characterization:
3) Setting:
4) Theme:
“Of Windows and Doors” is a tale of a young man and
woman in a city somewhere in the Global South.
“As they hurried home, Saeed and Nadia looked at the night sky, at
the forcefulness of the stars and the moon’s pockmarked brightness
in the absence of electric lighting and in the reduced pollution from
fuel-starved and hence sparse traffic. ” (10)
• Lights of urban places turn people blind.

• On page 10, Saeed wonders about the future, why does he

compare migration to “the loss of a home”?
Close Reading:
• Later in “Of Windows and Doors”, a handwritten note arrives
from the agent, it informs Saeed and Nadia of what?
• What is the decision of the father? And why?
• “He preferred to abide in the past, for the past offered more to
him. But Saeed’s father was thinking also of the future” (11).
• ‘Irony’ is used here. How?
• We know that Saeed’s father has no future, his decision to stay
means only one thing; death.
Close Reading:
• When Nadia and Saeed receive the notice to leave, Saeed’s father
asked Nadia to make promise.Which one? And what for?
• The narrator states that “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 lives those we
leave behind” (12).
• Why is migration synonymous to death?
• Also, reflect on the idea of being a migrant. Who is a migrant and
who is not in the story?
Close Reading:
• P. 13 offers a detailed description of a minor character. Who? Is a
positive or a negative description? And why?
• The meeting was in a converted house and the room of the meeting
was gloomy.Why?
• “Nadia and Saeed were summoned they saw a slender man who also
looked like a militant, and was picking at the edge of his nostril with
a fingernail, as though toying with a callus, or strumming a musical
instrument, and when he spoke they heard his peculiarly soft voice
and knew at once that he was the agent they had met before” (13).
Close Reading:
• So, you have a gloomy language, and it creates an intensified
atmosphere for the reader.
• The narrator describes how a character goes through the door for
the first time.Who is he talking about?
• For Nadia “the door, and drawing close she was struck by its
darkness, its opacity, the way that it did not reveal what was on the
other side and also did not reflect what was on this side, and so felt
equally like a beginning and an end” (13).
• What kind of language?
• Irony
Close Reading:
• “It was said in those days that the passage was both like dying and like
being born, and indeed Nadia experienced a kind of extinguishing as
she entered the blackness and a gasping struggle as she fought to exit
it” (14).
• Passage
• Each one has a passage of some kind.
• Irony is used again.
• After they have gone through the black door, what was the place that
Nadia and Saeed are taken to?
• They found themselves in a bathroom.
Close Reading:
• The narrator informs the reader that “she saw Saeed pivot back to
the door, as though he wished maybe to reverse course and return
through it ” (14). Who is the narrator talking about? What was the
decision of Saeed and why? Did he return back through the door?
• “they looked and saw a stretch of sand and gray waves coming in,
and it seemed miraculous, although it was not a miracle, they were
merely on a beach” (14).Why did he use the word ‘miracle’?
Close Reading:
• “in the lee of a hill they saw what looked like a refugee camp, with
hundreds of tents and lean-tos and people of many colors and
hues—many colors and hues but mostly falling within a band of
brown that ranged from dark chocolate to milky tea—and these
people were gathered around fires that burned inside upright oil
drums and were speaking in a cacophony that was the languages of
the world, what one might hear if one were a communications
satellite ” (15).
Close Reading:
• “In this group, everyone was foreign, and so, in a sense, no one was”
(15).
• What does this tell you about the issue of migration?
• The issues of identity and refugees.
• “they were on the Greek island of Mykonos, a great draw for tourists
in the summer, and, it seemed, a great draw for migrants this winter,
and that the doors out, which is to say the doors to richer
destinations, were heavily guarded, but the doors in, the doors from
poorer places, were mostly left unsecured” (15).
• Define the setting of Mohsin Hamid’s “Of Windows and
Doors”.
• Explain the decision of Saeed’s father to stay in his city.
• Impose
• How does “Of Windows and Doors” represent
migration and race?
• Who are the main characters in Mohsin Hamid’s
“Of Windows and Doors”?
• What are the main issues discussed in Mohsin
Hamid’s “Of Windows and Doors”?
• Give some instances of ‘ironical language’ and
‘playfulness’ in “Of Windows and Doors”.