Boarded Windows and Locked Doors

“One’s relationship to windows changed in the city” (71). As I stumbled upon this sentence, I found it ironic that, moments before, I was reading in my favorite spot in the house: the sunroom. I decided to delay going back to school and capture a few more hours of spring break at my house because I study better in open places with a lot of windows. I enjoy reading in the sunroom on a sunny day because the light passes through the multiple windows and brightens the room and my mood. The many windows put me at ease. However, in the story, “a window was the border through which death was possibly likeliest to come” (71). Here I was reading this in a room where my relationship to windows is completely opposite of that of the people in a war stricken city; the thought of death never once passed my mind in this room.

            When the people began to cover up windows with furniture and Nadia even “taped the inside of her windows with beige packing tape,” I physically cringed. I looked at my own windows and imagined how cold and closed off my favorite room would feel if I did the same. The thought frightened me. The feeling of being trapped and not being able to see what is around me made my chest constrict. Knowing how I would react to having no windows, I understood the mystery of doors. The uncertainty that Nadia and Saeed had passing through a door and not knowing what would be on the other side is frightening, “especially since any attempt to use one or keep one secret had been declared by the militants to be punishable as usual, by death” (75). Symbolizing freedom, opportunity, and escape from the war with a door, Hamid expresses the fear of the people. The fear tactics and threats of the militants made the people board up their windows and shut themselves inside. The militants wanted the people to feel isolated and closed off from the rest of the world so that they could control them with fear. For Nadia and Saeed, leaving the house and passing through the threshold was a risky endeavor. However, finding an open door proved to be the hardest part, for they found themselves with fewer options as more and more countries shut and locked their doors to refugees. Nevertheless, they found an unlocked door, a country, who perhaps did not have the means to guard their borders as extensively as other ones do in order to keep out fleeing migrants.