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Summary: Chapter 15

Salim arrived in London and reflected on what Indar had said previously about how air travel had helped him adjust to his homelessness. He also reflected on how the Europe he had just arrived in differed from what he’d expected. In Africa, he’d associated Europe with the language and the material goods that came from abroad. But his experience in London showed that image of Europe to be an unrealistic ideal.

London struck Salim as “something shrunken and mean and forbidding.” Walking through the streets, he saw people who looked like him struggling to sell their wares, much as they had done wherever they’d come from. Salim thought these people looked “imprisoned in their kiosks,” and the apparent “pointlessness” of their struggle made Salim sympathetic to Indar’s rejection of the idea of home.

Salim reports that near the end of his visit he became engaged to Nazruddin’s daughter, Kareisha. Kareisha’s experiences living in various parts of the world made her well adjusted, and her father had encouraged her to become a pharmacist to ensure that she’d have a skill that would prove lucrative anywhere. Salim spent his time alone walking along Gloucester Road, where there was a large Arab population. In conversation, Nazruddin expressed his disapproval of the Arabs in London, many of whom had become rich by pumping oil into Europe and sucking money out.

Nazruddin told Salim about his disastrous year in Canada. Shortly after arriving there, Nazruddin purchased a stake in a small oil company, the director of which made secret financial maneuvers that allowed him to get rich and leave his investors with significant debt. Deciding that property would make a safer investment, Nazruddin bought a movie theater. But once again, he got swindled. Before handing the property over, the previous owner changed out the projection equipment and removed the heating system.

Running from bad luck, Nazruddin moved to London. He invested in residential property, hoping that the rapidly increasing demand for housing would work in his favor. But he bought at the height of a boom, and values had since dropped considerably, forcing him to charge ridiculous rates. He had continued to lose yet more money due to tenants—mainly poor Arabs—failing to pay their rents. Nazruddin felt disenchanted with Europe. He sensed that he’d arrived at the wrong time, but he also recognized that “it’s the wrong time everywhere else too.” Even so, he remained in his usual good spirits.

At night, falling asleep in his hotel, Salim recalled his “illumination” and envisioned a planet full of pointlessly busy men. Salim entered a state of “indifference and irresponsibility,” which is when he got engaged to Kareisha. Near the end of Salim’s visit, Kareisha told him about Indar’s recent reversal of fortune.

Indar had traveled to New York to meet with some benefactors that had nudged him in undesirable directions. Despite numerous dinners and meetings with his main contact in the city, their talks didn’t progress much, and Indar’s money was running out. Though Indar considered himself this man’s equal, he realized his mistake one night when, invited to the man’s home, Indar saw that he was extraordinarily rich. In that moment, Indar understood their inequality and felt that the man had cheated him. He relocated to London, where he survived doing “the lowest kind of job.” This news touched Salim, who increasingly felt that the idea of going home was an illusion. As he prepared to return to Africa, he sensed that he had nothing to go back to and must live in the world as it existed.

Analysis: Chapter 15

Ironically, given his desire to flee Africa and pursue a better life, Salim’s experience in London did not liberate him so much as reinvigorate his anxiety about dislocation. From the beginning of the novel, Salim has shown his clear preference for everything European. And even though the insufficiencies of the Domain and its European inhabitants tempered Salim’s celebratory attitude, he still saw Europe as a potential refuge from the increasing political tension that threatened to make his life in Africa even less tolerable. But Salim’s experience in London challenged his last-remaining shred of idealism about the kind of life Europe might offer him. When he walked through the streets, he saw people like him struggling to eke out a living, imprisoned in the same degrading work they had done in their home nations. Salim saw himself in these people, and this connection led him to understand that a life in Europe would not differ greatly from his life in Africa. Nazruddin unintentionally confirmed this suspicion when he complained to Salim, “it’s the wrong time everywhere.” Instead of providing a clear refuge, London continued to nurture Salim’s longstanding sense of homelessness.

Salim’s negative depiction of the poor Arabs in London suggests a deeper fear that he could end up like them. Salim at once identified with the London Arabs and resisted this identification. For instance, he recognized the traditional behavior of slaves from the East African coast in a man dressed in a white uniform carrying groceries and walking ten feet ahead of a woman. This brief scene made Salim feel connected to the Arab population of London. Yet the extraordinary poverty he witnessed in the streets, matched with Nazruddin’s complaints about poor Arabs scamming him out of rent money, also caused Salim to distance himself from London’s Arab population. Salim did not view himself as belonging to the same low economic class, and subconsciously he feared that moving to London could do him an even worse turn than the town at the bend in the river.

Indar’s fall from grace provided Salim with another vision of his own potential downfall should he move to London. Indar had made a strong impression on Salim during his brief tenure as a lecturer at the Domain. Salim had come to understand his old friend as a man who, despite his depression, had overcome the perennial homelessness from which Salim suffered. Salim found in Indar both a friend and a role model, and despite their differences in background and experience, Salim took important lessons from Indar’s experience. For instance, the “illumination” Salim had in Chapter 14, in which he recognized that neither pain nor pleasure carried real meaning, took a cue from Indar’s rejection of sentimentality. Salim’s illumination appears once again in the present chapter, just before Salim recounts Kareisha’s story about how Indar had fallen on hard times and retreated from the world. Salim felt touched by this story, partly because he felt sorry for this man whom he regarded as a role model, and partly because he saw in Indar’s fate a preview of his own and so felt sorry for himself as well.

When Salim declares to the reader, “we had to live in the world as it existed,” he echoes the lesson he learned from Indar and laments the massive challenge in living up to that lesson. The frank, declarative tone of Salim’s words recalls the novel’s opening sentence: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” Like the novel’s opening sentence, Salim’s declaration here emphasizes the brutal reality that no individual can change the world around them and hence must adapt to the challenges that stand in their way. Salim first learned this lesson from Indar, who, in Chapter 9, explained how a recognition of the world’s fixity had forced a shift in attitude that had freed his mind and spirit. Now in London, however, Indar has retreated from the world, preferring to hide rather than face reality as it is. Despite his attempt to make something of himself, Indar has ultimately allowed himself “to become nothing.” Based on the novel’s opening sentence, then, it follows that Indar has no place in the world, which leaves Salim to wonder about his own future.

 

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