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Saeed’s Father
A woman who has “the commanding air of a schoolteacher, which she formerly was.” Like Saeed’s father, Saeed’s mother worries about Saeed even though he’s an adult. When he comes home one morning after having failed to tell his parents where he was all night—a night made all the more harrowing by the fact that radical militants took siege of the stock exchange that very day—Saeed’s mother is so overwhelmingly relieved to see him that she finds herself wanting to smack him for causing her so much stress. In this moment, the novel captures an aspect of the complications of love: how it creates connection but also vulnerability, joy but also personal pain, and can lead to instincts of both care and violence. Not long thereafter, Saeed’s mother is killed by a stray bullet. Her funeral is small and the grieving process is somewhat hindered by the fact that it’s dangerous for mourners and well-wishers to travel to the family house to pay their respects. Upon seeing how distraught Saeed and his father are at her funeral, though, Nadia decides to move into the apartment, offering whatever help she can as a way of easing their burdensome grief.
Saeed’s Mother Quotes in Exit West
The Exit West quotes below are all either spoken by Saeed’s Mother or refer to Saeed’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
It was the sort of view that might command a slight premium during gentler, more prosperous times, but would be most undesirable in times of conflict, when it would be squarely in the path of heavy machine-gun and rocket fire as fighters advanced into this part of town: a view like staring down the barrel of a rifle. Location, location, location, the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians.
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Chapter 5
Quotes
Saeed’s father encountered each day objects that had belonged to his wife and so would sweep his consciousness out of the current others referred to as the present, a photograph or an earring or a particular shawl worn on a particular occasion, and Nadia encountered each day objects that took her into Saeed’s past, a book or a music collection or a sticker on the inside of a drawer, and evoked emotions from her own childhood, and jagged musings on the fate of her parents and her sister, and Saeed, for his part, was inhabiting a chamber that had been his only briefly, years ago, when relatives from afar or abroad used to come to visit, and being billeted here again conjured up for him echoes of a better era, and so in these several ways these three people sharing this one apartment splashed and intersected with each other across varied and multiple streams of time.
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[I]t was an easy promise to make because she had at that time no thoughts of leaving Saeed, but it was also a difficult one because in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as Saeed and Nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.
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Saeed’s Mother Quotes in Exit West
The Exit West quotes below are all either spoken by Saeed’s Mother or refer to Saeed’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
It was the sort of view that might command a slight premium during gentler, more prosperous times, but would be most undesirable in times of conflict, when it would be squarely in the path of heavy machine-gun and rocket fire as fighters advanced into this part of town: a view like staring down the barrel of a rifle. Location, location, location, the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5
Quotes
Saeed’s father encountered each day objects that had belonged to his wife and so would sweep his consciousness out of the current others referred to as the present, a photograph or an earring or a particular shawl worn on a particular occasion, and Nadia encountered each day objects that took her into Saeed’s past, a book or a music collection or a sticker on the inside of a drawer, and evoked emotions from her own childhood, and jagged musings on the fate of her parents and her sister, and Saeed, for his part, was inhabiting a chamber that had been his only briefly, years ago, when relatives from afar or abroad used to come to visit, and being billeted here again conjured up for him echoes of a better era, and so in these several ways these three people sharing this one apartment splashed and intersected with each other across varied and multiple streams of time.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
[I]t was an easy promise to make because she had at that time no thoughts of leaving Saeed, but it was also a difficult one because in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as Saeed and Nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
