When reading Exit West one of the first concepts in the text that stuck out to me was the the gender roles in the book. From the beginning, its clear that Nadia craves independence, lacks a close relationship with her family, and rides a motorcycle, while Saeed has a close relationship with his family and values his religion deeply.

As the story progressed, I felt like the gender differences between them strengthened and caused tension in their relationship. Saeed loved Nadia, but he craved someone he could share his values with, someone to pray with, who he could also talk with and meet their family. Meanwhile, Nadia wanted a person who could go out with her, go on adventures. Yet the two of them didn’t sperate, likely because of a trauma bond between them. They had gone through so much together, it could feel wrong to seperate after that.

Through this story telling of “swapped” gender roles leading to seperation and eventually new relationships, Hamid portrays a concept that I beleive many young people today are realizing: While it may seem “correct” or “right” to have a dominant and submissive, or a independent and dependent in a relationship, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Saeed and Nadia speak to an experience that many young people have of learning to find someone that can do thier favorite activities with them and share their values, as opposed to being with someone that is so different from you that you may struggle to connect to them.

While there are many themes that can be found in this book, even in just the gender roles, I chose to speak about this one because it was something that I felt personally connected to.