Exit West

Over the course of this novel, Nadia and Saeed go from being the inhabitants of a particular city and culture to being stateless citizens of the world. There is also a gathering sense in the novel that their situation is more common than not. At the beginning of the novel, the magical doors that transport them from their devastated city to a beach in Mykonos are relatively rare and hard to find. By the time that Nadia and Saeed are in London, however—surrounded by refugees not only from their unnamed country but from all over the world—the doors have become almost commonplace, to the point where British authorities even recognize them. These authorities ultimately decide not to bombard Saeed and Nadia’s community of squatters, both because it would be an inhumane action and because it would do nothing to change their new reality: “Perhaps they had decided they did not have it in them to do what would have needed to be done, to corral and bloody and where necessary slaughter the migrants […] Perhaps they had grasped that the doors could not be closed, and new doors would continue to open” (164). The authorities instead find a compromise of putting the migrant squatters in a work camp, giving them shelter in return for them creating new living spaces for their expanding city.

This work camp anticipates the Marin community where Nadia and Saeed eventually settle down: a community that is made up almost entirely of refugees, in humble but livable circumstances. There are still gradations of privilege within this community—the people who live near the bottom of the hill have the most access to amenities and to electricity—but it is a place where migrants are no longer invaders. Rather, they have become the real natives, and it is the few remaining natives who have become (in the way of Native Americans) displaced and marginalized. The novel suggests that this reality, like that of climate change, is in our own near future, and that the less attached people are to the places of their birth, the better off they are.

While Nadia and Saeed’s romantic bond does not survive their migrations, they each find a way to survive individually. Nadia embraces the modernity and freedom around her, while Saeed is able to find a new sort of religious community. Nevertheless, there is a sadness about the novel’s end that does not solely have to do with the demise of their relationship. In the last chapter, the two of them reunite in their old neighborhood, which has been partially reconstructed and is “not a heaven but […] not a hell” (227). This is a suggestive phrase, indicating that in this weightless new global reality, in which people can go where they please, the idea of heaven and hell no longer has quite so much power. In exchange for the new freedoms that people like Nadia and Saeed enjoy, experience has perhaps been slightly flattened out. In the novel’s final passage, Nadia asks Saeed if he ever managed to go to the desert in Chili, alluding to a conversation early in their courtship about fantasy destinations; Saeed replies that he did, that “it [is] a sight worth seeing in this life,” and that he will take her some time “if she [has] an evening free” (229). This is a poignant exchange not only because Nadia and Saeed are no longer a couple, but because the idea of visiting a remote destination like the Chilean desert over the course of an evening seems almost too easy and deprives it a little of its singularity.