Exit West

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 10-12 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary

Nadia and Saeed begin a new life in Marin. They live in a shantytown high up in the hills, which has a beautiful view of the bay but also little amenities. They make an efficient home, however, using a bottle to collect rainwater and attaching a solar panel to their roof. Their new community is watched over, as was their London community, by government drones; a tiny one crashes in front of Saeed and Nadia’s hut.

Nadia finds work at a food cooperative down the hill, and Saeed finds a community among a largely African American church group. He finds himself attracted to the preacher’s daughter, who is African American on her father’s side but Middle Eastern, like Saeed, on her mother’s side. Nadia finds herself missing her friend in Mykonos and thinking of her in a romantic way. However, the couple are reluctant to separate, even while they understand themselves to be growing apart. They find some melancholy solace in rekindling their old habit of smoking marijuana together.

This chapter views “natives” in a different light than previous chapters, seeing them as an indigenous (and outnumbered) people akin to Native Americans. This chapter ends with a scene from the life of a wealthy old woman who has lived in the same house in Palo Alto for all of her life: first as a child, then as a wife and mother, and finally as a widow who is visited by her children. She has seen her town change and become full of foreigners, whom she feels little desire to know: “[She] saw no reason to make the effort, for people bought and sold houses the way they bought and sold stocks […] and when she sent out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it” (209).

Chapter 11 Summary

Saeed and Nadia agree to separate. Nadia moves into a spare cot at the food cooperative where she has been working, while Saeed remains in their hut. At the beginning of their separation they meet regularly for walks to check in with one another, but these meetings gradually dwindle off as they become more involved in their new lives and with new partners. Nadia begins an affair with a female cook whom she meets at a jazz festival, while Saeed consummates his attraction to the preacher’s daughter.

The preacher’s daughter is a social activist, and Saeed becomes involved in her work. One day she shows him a mysterious small device: “She was so happy, and he asked her why, and she said that this could be the key to the plebiscite, that it made it possible to tell one person from another and ensure they could vote only once, and it was being manufactured in vast numbers, at a cost so small as to be almost nothing” (220).

There is an isolated scene of a former maid in Marrakesh, Morocco. The maid is now old, and most of the people in the city, including her former wealthy employers, have either died or fled elsewhere. However, the maid remains, despite her daughter’s entreaties to leave with her. The maid is mute, adding to her bewildered isolation.

Chapter 12 Summary

Nadia returns to her old city, which is now “not a heaven but […] not a hell” (227). She learns (presumably through her mobile phone) that Saeed is visiting the city as well and is not far away from her at that moment. The two of them, now an old man and woman, meet up for coffee. They reminisce about their old life together, their conversation becoming more flirtatious and intimate as they relax in one another’s company: “Nadia said imagine how different life would be if I had agreed to marry you, and Saeed said imagine how different it would be if I had agreed to have sex with you, and Nadia said we were having sex, and Saeed considered and said yes I suppose we were” (228).

As they finish their coffee, Nadia asks Saeed if he has ever been “to the deserts of Chili” (228), alluding to a conversation that they once had as young lovers about their fantasy destinations. He says that he has, and that he would take her there “if she had an evening free” (229). They embrace and part ways.

Chapters 10-12 Analysis

This group of chapters is more futuristic than previous chapters, although the world that is described is in some ways still recognizable as our contemporary world. Silicon Valley’s influence is still strong, for instance—it is alluded to as “that realm of giddy technology” (193)—and Nadia and Saeed live in an ecologically conscious dwelling. There is also a familiar sense of the California bay area as a place that is forward-thinking and tolerant and, therefore, a last-ditch haven for people like Nadia and Saeed who have been rejected elsewhere.

The futuristic elements in these chapters are mostly a matter of degree and seem to suggest an imminently near future rather than a distant one. Nadia and Saeed’s shantytown is policed by tiny drones—suggesting that vigilant warfare has now been brought home to the United States, rather than exported elsewhere—even while refugees in Marin now outnumber natives. The book’s omniscient narrator states at one point in these chapters that “the apocalypse appeared to have arrived and yet it was not apocalyptic” (215). By this, the narrator seems to be referring to the twin (and related) global challenges of mass migration and global warming. The quote evokes the atmosphere of the slightly futuristic Marin that Nadia and Saeed inhabit: a world that is neither utopian nor dystopian, but is a funny, pragmatic combination of the two.

The isolated scenes in these last chapters involve not people who are transient, but rather people who have stayed where they are all of their lives. There is a suggestion that it is these people who have become the truly disenfranchised, however comfortable their circumstances might be. One of the characters in these scenes is a wealthy old woman who has lived in the same San Jose house all her life; the other character is a mute maid who refuses to leave her Marrakesh dwelling, even as an old woman who no longer has work. While these characters have different levels of privilege, they are equally impoverished in their stoic and bewildered isolation and their inability to adjust to the world around them.