What Strange Paradise

Amir and his family flee from Homs to Damascus, Syria, on a crowded bus. He is with his mother (Iman), his uncle (Younis, who married Iman after Amir’s father’s disappearance and whom Amir calls “Quiet Uncle”), and Amir’s new half-brother (Haroun). Amir wonders how a man as weak as Quiet Uncle can be expected to care for all of them.

Amir’s hearing was damaged by the bomb that destroyed their home. On the bus, he cannot hear Iman’s incessant questioning. Amir retreats from the chaotic surroundings into the refuge of his favorite comic book, which is about a boy and a girl named Zaytoon and Zaytoona; he is “captivated […] by the way Zaytoon and Zaytoona’s little town always seemed to reset at the beginning of every new story” (10). The bus ride, which is ordinarily only an hour long, takes 26 hours due to the presence of military checkpoints where the refugees are harangued by soldiers who question their beliefs and allegiance.

The Utus arrive in Damascus and are temporarily taken in by Mona, a socialite relative of Amir’s father and Quiet Uncle. Mona seems ashamed of her refugee relatives, encouraging them to leave the house whenever she throws a party. She refuses to believe Iman about their house being bombed; Mona insists that the Utus are exaggerating and manipulated by foreign propaganda.

The Utus leave Syria for good, leveraging the last of their savings toward moving on to Egypt by way of Jordan. On the ferry to Egypt, Amir reflects on this international travel, remembering how “Loud Uncle once said none of this was real, borders being a European disease” (15). Amir’s hearing gradually returns, except for traces of tinnitus left by the bombs. The family is harassed by one of the border control guards. The guard accuses them of being Jewish spies sent to infiltrate the country, distressing Quiet Uncle, but eventually he lets them go.

As they board another bus, Iman and Quiet Uncle seem to relax. Based on the adults’ reactions, Amir “believe[s] […] that it [is] over, that even if the place they’[ve] crossed to [is] entirely unknown to him or, worse yet, entirely familiar, at least they’[ve] survived the crossing” (18).

Vänna Hermes, a teenage girl from the island where Amir washed up, rakes snow from the freak storm that wrecked the refugee ship the previous night. She reflects on her mother making her do pointless chores and on the migratory sunhead swifts, whose return marks a change in the seasons for the islanders. She used to use her notebooks to trace the patterns the flocks of swifts made, imagining it was a secret script. Now, as she watches, she sees them “break into strange new formulations, asymmetrical and chaotic,” leading her to believe that “[s]omething about the island is changing, […] and the birds are the first to feel it” (22).

Vänna hears men yelling, and a moment later, sees Amir emerge from the bushes. She helps him over the wall into her yard and, recognizing his situation, hides him in an unused farmhouse. When the men from the coast guard approach, she points them in the wrong direction.

The Utu family makes their home in Alexandria, Egypt, though its refugee population is smaller than Cairo’s, because Quiet Uncle wants to be by the ocean. Amir watches a young boy hawking souvenir shirts to tourists near some ruins. He is envious of the boy’s self-assured attitude and wishes he could befriend him. Amir attempts to help a fully veiled woman and her daughter who are begging for change by roadside food stalls. He steals a small pie to give to her, but her horrified reaction makes him realize it was a mistake; he flees back home when he sees his theft was discovered by the shop owner.

When he is home, he sees Quiet Uncle has returned from his new janitorial job at a local library. Their apartment is small and furnished with ancient furniture and a cathode television that hardly works. Iman wonders if David, who has become to Amir “not a representative of the United Nations’ refugee-resettlement arm but a figment of the family’s communal imagination” will be coming by (31). Quiet Uncle and Iman bicker until Quiet Uncle receives a message on his phone, which seems to reassure him of something. Amir dislikes Quiet Uncle’s frequent and silent depressive moods, but he likes it even less “when he show[s] how easily kindness could come to him, if he wanted it to” (32).

Iman watches local soap operas not out of interest in the plot but to practice the local dialect and pronunciation to fit in. Amir struggles to think of his mother as a single person anymore; her personality seems to split when she speaks with different people, taking on the role needed at the moment.

When Quiet Uncle falls asleep, Amir sneakily takes his phone to play games. When he turns it on, he sees the last message Quiet Uncle received, which is “from an unknown number and contain[s] a single word: TONIGHT” (35).

After the soldiers are gone, Vänna returns to the farmhouse where Amir is waiting. She attempts to communicate with him in rudimentary sign language. Amir tells her that he is nine and that his name is David Utu. When he indicates that he is hungry, Vänna goes back to the house to search the barren cupboards for a snack. Vänna’s house was once a country resort for the rich. Her grandparents bought it in the hopes of restoring it and reopening it as an inn of their own. However, the Great Recession put an end to their ambitions. The island’s economy declined with the rest of Greece’s, and the Baldur Inn closed six months after her grandparents opened it.

Vänna is accosted by her mother, an enigmatic woman whom Vänna hardly understands. She tells Vänna to go to town to buy lunch for the family. The island is quiet in preparation for Easter weekend; though she is not religious, Vänna enjoys this quiet. She walks a familiar path to the Hotel Xenios along the beach that has been gradually overtaken by hotels, bars, and party yachts that blast rap music she hates. Vänna comes upon the chaos of the police and coast guards processing the scene of the migrant shipwreck.

Recognizing one of the coast guards as Ronis, the elder brother of one of her schoolmates, she approaches. When she asks what is going on, Ronis explains that a migrant ship has crashed and that bodies have been washing ashore all day; some are identified, and some are not. She casually asks if anyone with the surname “Utu” has been identified; Ronis responds in the negative. He shows her how the migrants’ life vests were filled with spongy foam that easily takes on water. He tells her that the migrants do not think or plan their actions.