Brief biography of mohsin hamid was born in Pakistan, but he spent much of his
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| Page Number 127 Explanation and Analysis This is a description of the relational dynamic inside the mansion of refugees in London. Threatened by British police officers who have demanded that they leave the house, the many migrants squatting in the mansion’s bedrooms unite in their fear. Many of them, it seems, have had similar experiences with dangerous police and soldiers and though this commonality might go overlooked in other circumstances, now the residents of the house” develop a camaraderie based upon their similar histories and the threat of violence currently facing all of them at once. Indeed, they are penned in together and thus unable to scatter and go their separate ways. Instead, they unite as one multicultural people, and this transcends the various cultural and national divisions that might otherwise keep them from thinking of themselves as a cohesive whole. This moment also captures that way that threats against refugees often have the opposite of their intended effect: the British police and authorities are trying to separate and “break” the refugees, but in practice they are forcing the refugees to stick more closely together despite their many differences. Chapter 8 Quotes From dark London, Saeed and Nadia wondered what life must be like in light London, where they imagined people dined inelegant restaurants and rode in shiny black cabs, or at least went to work in offices and shops and were free to journey about as they pleased. In dark London, rubbish accrued, uncollected, and underground stations were sealed. The trains kept running, skipping stops near Saeed and Nadia but felt as a rumble beneath their feet and heard at a low, powerful frequency, almost subsonic, like thunder or the detonation of a massive, distant bomb. Related Characters Saeed, Nadia Related Themes: Page Number 146 Explanation and Analysis In the first paragraph of this passage, Hamid emphasizes the demarcations that keep refugees like Saeed and Nadia from interacting with the rest of London’s population. Because officials have cutoff electricity in the parts of town where large migrant populations are living, the delineation between the affluent public and the groups of suffering refugees is especially observable. Indeed, Nadia and Saeed pass their time in dark London wondering what life must be like in light London In doing so, they envision elegant restaurants shiny black cabs and office buildings. That the young couple is fantasizing about relatively ordinary things like cabs and office buildings highlights just how profoundly they have been cutoff from the normal society. In this way, Hamid shows that refugees like Saeed and Nadia aren’t asking for much when they migrate to anew country—indeed, they merely want to join society and lead regular lives without having to face the threat of violence. Instead, though, they’re forced to live in the dark listening as even London’s trains—a mode of public transportation normally made available to everybody—deny them access by skipping their stops. Together in this group they conversed in a language that was builtin large part from English, but not solely from English, and some of them were in any case more familiar with English than were others. Also they spoke different variations of English, different Englishes, and so when Nadia gave voice to an idea or opinion among them, she did not need to fear that her views could not be comprehended, for her English was like theirs, one among many. Download 0.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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