Towards the end of Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, a world that was ravaged by war begins to calm, slowly but surely, and around the world migrants and natives begin to fuse their cultures. New foods were a result of this fusion and Nadia was excited to try all that was there to offer: “…new cuisines that were being born, for many of the world’s foods were coming together and being reformed in Marin, and the place was a taster’s paradise…”(Hamid 218). While Nadia was enjoying exploring these new cultures and how they fused, Saeed wanted to preserve his culture and language. These two, who were so close, had completely different interactions with this new world but, is there a way to have both?

Culture is a center piece in the lives of many whether through nationality, language, traditions (familial or community based), religion, etc and frequently, culture can impact our decisions, thoughts, and feelings however, if we sit in our cultural spaces and refuse to venture out, we loose the ability to discover the world through different perspectives as well as the ability to engage in productive dialogue that can strengthen bonds and increase understanding.

I think that both Saeed and Nadia need to find a middle ground where they fuse pieces of their culture with the culture of those surrounding them but I am not quite sure how they would do this well, if at all, or whether they would end up being too timid like Saeed or loose much of their culture like Nadia.

In Moshin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West, there is, every so often, a short story about a person or group of people that are unknown to the two main characters, Saeed and Nadia. These are told in a style of an impartial, observing third person and are seemingly random.

First of all, I made sure to include the word seemingly in the title, because none of the references are unrelated. Some, you have to dig deeper to find the relevance, like the reference to the two old men who find each other-after pondering that scene for a long time, I came to the conclusion that it was meant to demonstrate the importance of trust and human companionship-but others, the meaning is pretty obviously embedded in the text, such as the reference to the women living in Paulo Alto, at the end of which Hamid literally writes what he wished to convey through that scene: “We are all migrants through time.”

However, one cannot deny that Hamid could convey the mini-themes which he reveals in these paragraphs through a story of Saeed and Nadia. There must, I concluded, be a larger theme that Hamid wishes to convey by including tales of people that aren’t recurring characters in the novel; people whom we might otherwise forget.

These references must be this to combat the forgetfulness of a world outside of Nadia and Saeed, or rather, the references serve as a reminder of the vastness of the world that Saeed and Nadia, and we readers, live in. Hamid uses the tales of other people to convey the complexity of the world and put Saeed and Nadia’s journey in greater context.

In this, Hamid makes the tale infinitely more meaningful. Instead of learning about oneself when reading this book, one can learn about one’s role in a larger world, or society.