Nadia secures a room above the food cooperative where she works, which is open to migrants when they need it. In general,
she feels somewhat isolated amongst the other cooperative workers, since they give her too much personal space because of her black robes. This changes, however, when a pale- skinned tattooed man comes in while she’s working the register one day. Placing
a pistol on the counter, he says, So what the fuck do you think of that Not knowing what to do,
Nadia remains still and says nothing, simply training her eyes on his chin. So what the fuck do you think of that he says again, this time with less confidence. Finally, after an seemingly interminable moment of silence, he scoops the gun up from the counter and leaves without shooting anybody or taking anything.
Nadia’s bravery when the tattooed man tries to rob the cooperativeperhaps grows out of the difficult and frightening experiences she’shad to endure. After all, violence became an everyday reality whileshe was living in her home country, and so she has learned how tomanage her fear. Nonetheless, it’s no doubt disappointing to seethat even in America—after all of her travels—she still has tocontend with hate. Fortunately, she defeats the tattooed man byrefusing to engage, a fact that suggests nonviolence is the mosteffective way of responding to malice.In the aftermath of the tattooed man’s presence, Nadia’s coworkers begin to embrace her, either because they’re
“impressed by her mettle in the
face of danger or because they[have] recalibrated their sense of who is a threat and who [is]
threatened.” In this way, Nadia begins to feel like she belongs. In tandem with this feeling, the Marin community begins to blossom into a vibrant culture, which some people take to calling anew jazz age since a person can walk around Marin and see all kinds of ensembles, humans with humans,
humans with electronics, dark skin with light skin with gleaming metal and matte plastic, computerized music and unamplified music and even people who wear masks or hide themselves from view.”
Marin’s transformation into a place populated by a thoroughlydiverse set of people recalls the multicultural community Nadiarelished in London when she and Saeed were living in a mansionwith refugees from other countries. This, it seems, is what Nadia hasbeen searching fora place into which she can integrate without thethreat of violence or hate. And although she does have to face theantagonism of the tattooed man, doing so only helps her peers“recalibrate their sense of who is a threat and who is threatened,”ultimately helping them see past the negative stereotypessurrounding people like Nadia who wear black robes and cover theirheads.Nadia sees the head cook from her food cooperative at a musical event and, after their initial conversations that night,
they start dating. Meanwhile, Saeed grows closer to the preacher’s daughter, who finds in him an attitude to faith that intrigues her As for Nadia and Saeed’s
own contact, they reach out to each other periodically, going on long walks together and calling or texting one another almost daily. They see one another every weekend until their meetings start to get interrupted by their connections to their other love interests. And although at first this distance between them upsets them, they gradually become comfortable not speaking for extended periods of time. They each grew less worried for the other Hamid explains, and eventually a month went by without any contact, and then a year, and then a lifetime.”
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