Brief biography of mohsin hamid was born in Pakistan, but he spent much of his
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| In this vignette, Hamid shows readers once again that the doors aren’t only used to escape unfortunate circumstances. Indeed, they also have the ability to reunite loved ones. Although this woman’s daughter most likely had to live in this orphanage because of some disaster or danger that separated her family, now the doors have reconnected her and her mother. When the raid on the migrant ghetto in which Saeed and Nadia [find] themselves begins, an officer is immediately shot in the leg, exacerbating tensions so that the authorities begin firing their weapons. Outside when the fighting begins, Saeed rushes to the door, which Nadia quickly opens and pulls him through. They then retreat to their room, push the mattress against the window, and wait. They hear gunshots and helicopters overhead and see, when they peek through the gap between the mattress and the window, thousands of leaflets dropping from the sky Later, they smell smoke, but the noises eventually subside. Finally, they hear that at least two hundred migrants have been burned alive in a cinema that the authorities torched. They also hear about other places where large numbers of migrants have been killed, but there is—at least—no more shooting that night. The police’s bloody rampage is clearly made worse by the fact that somebody shoots an officer in the leg at the outset of the conflict. This ultimately confirms Hamid’s notion that fear is the primary catalyst for violence and xenophobia. After all, it’s possible that the officers wouldn’t have carried out the raid so violently if they hadn’t been made to fear for their own lives. In this way, Hamid reminds readers that terror and panic lurk behind the hate and vitriol dividing people from one another. Time passes after the attack, and the nativists don’t continue their violence. Perhaps they had decided they did not have it in them to do what would have needed to be done Hamid suggests. It’s possible, he notes, that the nativists have come to understand that the doors can’t be sealed, that their efforts are futile. And so he writes, irrespective of the reason, decency on this occasion won out, and bravery, for courage is demanded not to attack when afraid Electricity and water is restored to all areas of London, and Saeed and Nadia—along with their housemates and neighbors—celebrate this good fortune. Though it’s unfortunate decency only comes after the police have killed so many migrants in such a cruel and grotesque fashion, Saeed and Nadia find themselves finally able to relax in the aftermath of the attack. What’s more, Hamid praises the people of London for refraining from instigating further violence, calling them “brave” because it takes courage not to attack when afraid Once again, then, he emphasizes the fact that fear, violence, and xenophobia are directly related to one another. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2018 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 46 CHAPTER By summer, Saeed and Nadia are living in a settlement called London Halo, an area surrounding the city that used to be protected from construction by the government but is now one of many new cities getting built to accommodate the massive influx of refugees into England. They live and toil in a worker camp sleeping in an encampment and working on constructing permanent structures for migrants. In exchange for their labor in clearing terrain and building infrastructure and assembling dwellings from prefabricated blocks, migrants were promised forty meters and a pipe a home on forty square meters of land and a connection to all the utilities of modernity Hamid writes. When Hamid uses the phrase forty meters and a pipe he references the promise made to former slaves in America in 1865, Download 0.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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