Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: Time Travellesque Trapped Kinetics of Refugee Surveillance towards Exit West

This paper demonstrates how Mohsin Hamid's Exit West deals with the pernicious consequences of war, and anarchy. The refugees Saeed and Nadia resorted to escape routes in search of an asylum, due to war. These were desperate times that called for desperate measures. When both protagonists escape using "black doors," what I call 'time- time-travellesque,' it transports them to an alternate reality that negates time and space. This research examines how spatiotemporal travel impacts these two characters who bypass the experience of "trapped kinetics". My argument is that refugee experience and incessant surveillance change people. Both protagonists go through similar experiences but come up with different ways to deal with life. This illuminates how these black doors transcend the restrictions imposed by time and space and how this change rebuts the travel restrictions imposed by visas and borders for the refugees.