Refugees on the unarmed road of flight: Exit West

I have decided to just accept Mohsin Hamid's strange narrative devices in his new novel, Exit West, and just take the novel on the basis of its many strengths. The first half (or so) of the novel is about a young couple, Nadia and Saeed, trying to lead a normal life in an Islamic state where any infractions can be punished by death and we watch their (unnamed) city sink further into deprivation and chaos as civil war tears up streets and neighborhoods - all really powerful stuff. (I surmised in yesterday's post that the city may be Damascus; I note that in my post on the excerpt that ran a year or so ago in the New Yorker I surmised Aleppo - both possible, as are many other war-torn Islamic cities). N & S pay a middle man to arrange for their escape to Europe, which is where the narrative gets weird as their transport to Europe involves stepping through a door and emerging in a new world. OK, so I get it now - Hamid has no interest in writing about the transition or transport of refugees, just about the locations in which they settle tentatively and temporarily. (His blend of realism and magic realism recalls Colson Whitehead's treatment of the "underground railroad" as a literal super-subway system that transports his escaped-slave characters and their pursuers to various more or less realistic Southern cities.) The second half of the novel shows N & S settling for a while in refugee camp on Mikonos and then, through another instant transport abetted by a Greek Samaritan, into a squat in London - where they claim a room for themselves and a small army of activists rally to protect the squatters from eviction. (How the house in maintained in pristine condition is another element of magic I guess.) At its best this novel is almost like a great nonfiction magazine story about the refugee plight as experienced by one more or less typical young couple; we get a sense of the mix of benevolent strangers, indifferent bureaucrats, and malicious schemers - and the resourcefulness of those trying to find a place for a better life. Much will depend on how Hamid draws this narrative to a conclusion, or doesn't.

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