Related Characters Saeed, Nadia Related Themes: Page Number 94 Explanation and Analysis This is an explanation of Saeed’s attachment to his home city. Hamid provides this insight after Nadia and Saeed have hired an agent to find them a door through which they can escape to another country. Although it’s obvious to everybody—including Saeed—that he must leave, Hamid shows that coming to terms with forced migration is not entirely straightforward Indeed, the process of deciding when to escape is complicated, for Saeed has never envisioned having to uproot himself from his culture once and for all In this moment, then, it becomes clear that it’s important for Saeed to feel as if he can comeback to this city if he wants to, returning so that he doesn’t have to conceive of his departure as a loss of home Finality, then, is portrayed as one of the most emotionally difficult aspects of becoming a refugee. This aligns with the fact that as Saeed and Nadia leave behind their native city, Saeed actually feels more and more connected to it and the culture he left behind. If he can’t return home, then he can at least take on various practices that remind him of home and, thus, reconnect to a familiar lifestyle. Nadia was possibly even more feverishly keen to depart, and her nature was such that the prospect of something new, of change, was at its most basic level exciting to her. But she was haunted by worries too, revolving around dependence, worries that in going abroad and leaving their country she and Saeed and Saeed’s father might beat the mercy of strangers, subsistent on handouts, caged in pens like vermin. Nadia had long been, and would afterwards continue to be, more comfortable with all varieties of movement in her life than was Saeed, in whom the impulse of nostalgia was stronger, perhaps because his childhood had been more idyllic, or perhaps because this was simply his temperament. Related CharactersSaeed, Nadia Related Themes: