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



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As away of coping with the constant fear of living in their war-torn
city, Nadia and Saeed intensify their own romantic connection. As
such, their love becomes not only a relational bond, but a method of
escape, away of turning away from the terror of violence
surrounding them on all sides.
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Page 32

Public executions occur frequently as the militants cement their control over the city. Amidst the horror, Saeed’s father travels everyday to his brother’s house, where he sits with other old men and old women and talks about the past, often reminiscing about his wife, whom they all knew. On his way back, he stops and lingers at her grave. While doing this one day, he witnesses a group of teenagers playing soccer in the street and feels warmed by the memory of having done this himself as a boy. When he looks closer, though, he sees the young men aren’t using a ball, but rather the severed head of a goat. Disgusted, he looks even closer before ripping his eyes away, for what he sees leaves him aghast the young men aren’t playing soccer with a goat’s head—they’re playing with a human head.
Once again, Hamid shows how fear has pervaded seemingly every
element of his characters lives, such that Saeed’s father can’t even
walk home from his wife’s grave without witnessing a sickening act.
Still, he doesn’t stay holed up in the house. Instead, he dedicates
himself to maintaining his connections by visiting a community of
friends and family and stopping to say hello to his wife’s grave. Even
so, life in this city is quickly changing for the worse, making it all the
more apparent that Saeed, Nadia, and Saeed’s father are going to
either have to find away to exist safely (an all but impossible task)
or somehow escape.
Nadia and Saeed resolve to find a passage out of the city. One of their friends puts them in touch with an agent who claims to have access to the mysterious doors that transport people to other lands, so they set out one evening wearing the garments and stylings required by the militants. Terrified, they pass a hanging body and try to carry themselves innocently, knowing all the while that they’re being watched by drones flying overhead. When they reach the place they were told to go, the agent tells them not to turnaround, approaching them from behind and demanding that Nadia uncover her head. When the agent asks for the money, Saeed gives it to him and wonders whether he’s making a down payment or being robbed.”
When Saeed and Nadia walk through the streets, Hamid notes that
there are drones watching them from the sky. This ultimately
introduces anew form of connection into the storyline, adding to
the book’s previous considerations of how technology like
cellphones put people in touch with one another. Now, Hamid calls
readers’ attention to a much broader form of connectivity as the
drones fly above and watch the two lovers with cameras connected
to unknown sources, thereby joining Saeed and Nadia with other
people in other parts of the world.
While Saeed and Nadia wait to hear back from the agent—who’s busy searching fora new unguarded door—many people pass through doors around the world. One family in particular can be seen through a series of security cameras at a luxury resort in Dubai, where they emerge confusedly and walk outside into the bright light, where they’re then picked up by still more security cameras and hovering drones, which chart their progression along a beach boardwalk, past tanning vacationers. The family drifts in and out of the cellphone frames of people taking selfies, making their way through the strange resort area until they’re intercepted and taken away by officers who jump out of a van with grilles on its windows.”

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