Brief biography of mohsin hamid was born in Pakistan, but he spent much of his

Saeed and Nadia go outside, emerging between two small buildings and feeling a cool breeze on their faces while hearing the sound of a shell held to their ears. Before long, they realize they’re near a beach, which strikes them as somehow
“miraculous” as they take in the scent of briny water. Nearby,
they see a beach club and various bars and restaurants marked with signs in English and several European languages. Soon a
“pale-skinned man comes and shoos them down the beach,
waving his arms at them as if he’s conversing in an international pidgin dialect of sign language As they move along the beach, they eventually see 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.”
When Hamid says that the “pale-skinned” man’s gesture is like “an
international pidgin dialect of sign language he suggests
that—unfortunately—disdain and resistance to newcomers is
something of a universal language. Indeed, the man’s frantic
gestures communicate to Saeed and Nadia that they aren’t
welcome on this portion of the beach—they don’t need to speak this
man’s language in order to understand that he doesn’t want them
here. Upon seeing the refugee camp, they see that he wants them to
exist with the other migrants, perhaps so he can more easily cordon
them off from his country’s citizens and way of life.
“In this group, everyone was foreign writes Hamid, and so, in a sense, no one was Nonetheless, Nadia and Saeed still seek out a group of fellow countrywomen and men who tell them that they’ve reached the Greek island of Mykonos, a destination that attracts tourists in the summer and migrants in the winter. Like everywhere else, Mykonos has its own doors that can take people to even richer places, but they are heavily guarded though the doors to poorer places are easy to pass through, since nobody stands watch over them, perhaps in the hope that people will go back to where they came from—although almost no one ever [does]—or perhaps because there are simply too many doors from too many poorer places to guard them all.”
Even though a natural sense of unity prevails over the refugee camp
because of the fact that everyone is foreign Saeed and Nadia
gravitate toward citizens from their own country. This is, of course,
understandable—people often feel most comfortable with people
from their own cultures. Nonetheless, Hamid demonstrates here
that even people like Saeed and Nadia—who have fled their country
to avoid the harsh division of society into sects and groups—have
a tendency to divvy themselves into subsets within a larger group.
The camp itself runs primarily on bartering, like a trading post in an old-time gold rush Nadia and Saeed learn from their fellow expatriates that almost anything is attainable in this settlement, from sweaters to mobile phones to antibiotics to,
quietly, sex and drugs The people, they’re told, are mostly nice and safe, though there are gangs of young men with an eye on the vulnerable Still, the island is considered pretty safe,”
“except when it [isn’t], which makes it like most places Either way, Saeed and Nadia are told that it’s wise to be in the camp after nightfall rather than on the beach or in the hills.

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