Brief biography of mohsin hamid was born in Pakistan, but he spent much of his
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| Page Number 186 Explanation and Analysis This is a description of the ways in which Nadia and Saeed change while living in London and toiling in the refugee work camps. Spending their days apart and hardly talking in the evenings, both Nadia and Saeed discover that they can now look upon each other with something akin to objectivity, as if with each move they’ve gained a certain amount of distance, vantage points from which they can observe one another anew. This, it seems, is how migration influences romantic connections. As Nadia and Saeed adapt to their shifting environments, it’s only logical that their “personalities” also morph, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us Whereas Saeed responds to his new surroundings by increasing the amount he prays and trying to reconnect to his past, Nadia embraces the many changes in her life. And while Hamid suggests that these kinds of personal transformations are natural—that neither is right and neither is wrong—he also illustrates that such shifts in identity can open up rifts inside otherwise strong relationships. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2018 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 18 Chapter 10 Quotes Now, though, in Marin, Saeed prayed even more, several times a day, and he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could beloved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe inhumanity s potential for building abetter world, and so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope, but he felt that he could not express this to Nadia, that he did not know how to express this to Nadia, this mystery that prayer linked him to, and it was so important to express it. Download 0.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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