Exit West: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Saeed and Nadia fight their way into a beautiful bedroom with a dazzling view of the city skyline at night. Outside, they see perfectly maintained white houses and blossomed cherry trees. Certain they’re in a lush hotel, they walk into a hallway and then down an impressive staircase, finding their way to a kitchen with almost no food in it. Turning on a TV, they discover they’re in London, though they still don’t understand what kind of building they’re in. Before long, a man comes into the kitchen looking just as lost as they are before wandering away again. By the following evening, more and more migrants come downstairs from the same room through which Nadia and Saeed entered. Most of them are from Nigeria, though there are also people from Somalia and “the borderlands between Myanmar and Thailand.”

Responding to this onslaught of new arrivals, Saeed and Nadia claim a bedroom on the first floor with a balcony from which they can jump into the backyard’s garden if they ever need to escape. They determine that they’re not in hotel, but in a large, empty mansion. Delighting in the luxurious bedroom, Nadia takes a long shower, cleaning herself under the firm water pressure. Bathing like this makes her feel renewed, as if she’s returning to herself, but when she goes to put on her clothes again, she can’t bear to wear the filthy robes, so she washes them in the bathtub. “What the hell are you doing?” Saeed says after pounding on the door, which Nadia realizes she locked. He angrily reminds her that this isn’t their house and complains about how long she’s taking. “I need five more minutes,” she says. “I have to wash my clothes.”

When Nadia shuts the bathroom door again, “the extraordinary satisfactions of the steamy bathroom” have “evaporated.” Upon finishing washing her clothes, she goes into the bedroom with a towel around her body and another on her head, “prepared to let the little confrontation” with Saeed go. But then he opens his mouth, saying, “You can’t stand here like that.” In response, she says, “Don’t tell me what I can do,” a statement that stuns and frustrates Saeed, who goes into the bathroom and bathes and washes his own clothes before lying down on the single bed with Nadia for the night, who remain “cramped” and unwilling to touch one another like a couple that is “long and unhappily married, a couple that [makes] out of opportunities for joy, misery.”

Two days later, a housekeeper comes to the mansion and is shocked to find migrants camped throughout the house. The police come not long thereafter, vans of officers in riot gear and bullet-proof vests. As the officers shout threats over a bullhorn, imploring the migrants to leave the house, “a sort of camaraderie” forms amongst the refugees, a connection that would perhaps not take place if they were simply in the streets together. And although some migrants decide to leave, most stay inside. What’s even more extraordinary is that people arrive in large numbers to stand behind the officers, a diverse crowd that bangs pots and pans and chants in many different languages until the police relent and withdraw. The next morning, Nadia is awoken by a call to prayer and finds herself disoriented and wondering where she is, especially as Saeed gets out of bed to pray.

Abandoned mansions all over the city—in the wealthiest neighborhoods—are taken up by the refugee community. What’s more, doors start appearing all over the city, and though migrants flow in, many people also flow out, like a British accountant who decides to walk through a portal when it appears in his bedroom. Just as he is about to commit suicide, the door to his house’s guestroom goes dark, opening up onto the unknown. At first, he grabs a hockey stick to defend himself, but he soon realizes there’s no point in protecting himself, since he intends to die anyway. As such, he goes about filling up his bathtub, intending to proceed with his plan of slitting his wrists. But the door’s blackness reminds him of something about his mother, and this thought throws him into deep memories about his childhood.

Thinking about his mother’s illness and his father’s withdrawn personality and his own childhood, the accountant decides to go through the door “just once, to see what [is] on the other side.” Sometime later, his daughter and his best friend receive texts from him, pictures of him on a beach somewhere in Namibia. The accompanying message informs them that he won’t be returning but that he they shouldn’t worry because he has “felt something for a change.” “With that he was gone,” writes Hamid, “and his London was gone, and how long he remained in Namibia it was hard for anyone who formerly knew him to say.” 

Nadia and Saeed react differently to living in the mansion with the other refugees. For Nadia, the experience is somewhat rewarding, and she takes pleasure in the idea that a community might form amongst the migrants. Saeed, though, finds it more difficult to integrate into the various groups. In Mykonos, he always preferred to stay on the outskirts of the camp, but in the mansion this isn’t an option. Plus, he feels guilty about occupying a space he doesn’t own. When other refugees begin taking things from the house that are valuable, he objects. In turn, Nadia chastises him, telling him that his position is “absurd” and that it’s dangerous for him to take such a stance. She tells him not to be an idiot, and this shocks him. Nonetheless, he abides by her advice, though he wonders if “this new way of speaking to one another” has become normal.

One night, the mansion comes under attack by a nativist mob. Saeed and Nadia are just returning from having eaten out, and they each sustain minor injuries. Apparently, riots like this one ran throughout all of London, and the next day Saeed and Nadia wake up sore and bruised, shuffling against one another uncomfortably in their single bed—Nadia pushes Saeed with her hip to make space, and, in return, Saeed bumps her back. Annoyed, they turn to look at each other and Saeed touches Nadia’s swollen eye and they both start laughing, agreeing to not begin the morning with an argument.

Rumors run rampant throughout the city that a massive plan is in the works to reclaim London for Englanders. Nadia and Saeed learn that the effort will be executed by both law enforcement officials and angry nativists, that a large-scale attack is on the horizon. These thoughts prompt the couple to consider their options, sitting in their bedroom at night debating whether or not they should stay in London. During these evenings, they feel closer to one another than they’ve been feeling in the recent weeks, deciding to treat each other more kindly from here on. Even so, the British government patrols the zone from overhead, flying in drones and helicopters over people like Nadia and Saeed, who have “run from war already, and [do] not know where next to run, and so [are] waiting, like so many others.”

Despite various volunteer efforts and aid from sympathetic Londoners, Saeed and Nadia can’t help but recognize the pre-conflict feeling presiding over London. During this time, they see a fox in the courtyard, and an old woman tells them that this fox isn’t truly a fox, but rather Saeed and Nadia’s love. Well-intended as this comment is, it makes the couple uncomfortable because they have been struggling to remain romantic. They’ve even taken to going their separate ways during the day, though they know that if the nativist attack descends while they’re apart, they may never be able to find one another. Still, spending time separately somewhat enhances their relationship, and they sit on the balcony in the evenings, sometimes even holding hands or kissing. And every so often, they go into the bedroom and try to “rekindle” an “otherwise diminished fire” by “torment[ing] each other’s bodies, never having sex.”

One night, the fox in the courtyard finds a dirty diaper and drags it around, whipping it left and right and making a mess of feces. On that same night, the electricity is cut off by the authorities, plunging the mansions filled with refugees into utter darkness.