Work

Summary

Moshin Hamid’s short story “Of Windows and Doors” tells the story of Saeed and Nadia. Just giving quick snapshots of each of their lives, the story comes to focus on the current warfare going on in their city. Saeed and Nadia dream (and succeed) at escaping from their home but fall victim to horrific expirences along the way. There is a turf war going on between two sides and they are caught right in the middle. Not only are people being left jobless and have to stay indoors, they are getting shot in the street, hung from street lamps and are waiting each second for a bomb to be dropped on them. In the beginning of the story the couple lives apart with Saeed making risky trips to Nadia’s apartment but after Saeed’s mother dies from a “stray heavy-calibre round” Nadia decides to move in. After his mother passes, the couple realizes they need to get out of the city as soon as possible. With a friend’s help they go out one night to meet someone who can help them leave, called an “agent”. Following all the laws of dress, they are still at risk going out of the home to meet him but they do. They pay the man, without being able to face him and told “the doors were everywhere, but finding one the militants had not yet found, a door not yet guarded, that was the trick, and might take a while.” After waiting, they recieve a time and place to meet. Saeed’s father explains he cannot go because leaving the place of his late wife is too heartbreaking, so Saeed and Nadia go on without him, knowing this will be the last time they see him. After a long journey, the couple finds themselves in Mykonos, Greece. With a new life before them, surrounded by others in the same situation and different past expirences.

I really enjoyed this short story because it can be interpreted by the reader in many aspects; the significance of the doors and windows, the imagery as well as the character’s actions. What really spoke to me was how well Mohsin Hamid was able to make me feel certain things through his words. The way he describes situations allow for a reader, such as myself, to sink into the character’s body and understand the tension, grief or love (etc.) in the specific scene. The part I connected to the most was the relationship Saeed’s father had with his mother after she had died. I could tell their love was monumental simply by the way he mourned her. “Saeed’s father went each day to the home of a cousin who was like an elder brother to him and his surviving siblings, and there he sat, with the old men and old women, and drank tea and coffee and discussed the past, and they all knew Saeed’s mother well and had stories to relate in which she featured prominently”. I’ve had a lot of people in my family pass which is never easy but speaking about them is how we keep them alive. This quote is universal for how many people try and make the death o fa loved one OK. His father not being able to leave the land where his wife was buried is understandable because he would have been giving her up forever, more than he already had. The grieving process is confusing but I’ve been lucky enough to experience a family where we don’t forget those who have died but rather live with them as we move on in life. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for his father to not have gone with his son but I understand. Saeed has Nadia now, his father needed the people close to his mother to keep her alive in any way for him.