Projected Contexts and Subjective Time

To be completely truthful, the Hamid short story proved to be a bit more difficult for me to consider the connections to time.  However, upon some closer consideration, I think that it is due to some deliberate choices on the part of the author.  The setting is never explicitly stated: the names Saeed and Nadia, along with references to long beards and hair coverings point to the likelihood that it is set somewhere in the Middle East (Hamid 75).  There is never any mention of exactly when these events are taking place, but the implications are there: Hamid references refugee camps in the Mediterranean, full of displaced people from various countries.  My mind instantly makes the connection to the new program my grandmother watches in Italian: images of refugees washing up on the beaches of Italy and Greece while the newscasters discuss the strain that it is putting on their own country.  The lack of specific details on time allows the story to exist in an interesting space in the mind of the reader. The reader can place the story into their own context.  For myself, I likely chose the context that Hamid is addressing based on the date of publication in relation to the time that I am reading, but a reader in the future may project their own unique context onto the setting of the story.

            Hamid’s story also addresses the individual experience of time. He writes, “He preferred to abide in the past, for the past offered more to him. But Saeed’s father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed…because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down and threaten him with drowning, for the child is now stronger than the parent” (76).  This passage raises several characteristics regarding the experience of time.  First, Hamid notes that Saeed’s father chooses to live in the past; this means that he has some agency over the manner in which he experiences the passage of time.  This conforms to the idea of Martin Luther King Jr. that time is a neutral force in the world, and it is up to the individual to shape the way it is experienced. A father can hold on to the past when living in an uncertain present in order to live a better life.  This also connects to the next idea mentioned regarding time: the possibilities of the future.  Hamid addresses the fact that experiences that were once intertwined may reach a point where they must diverge.  Saeed and his father have lived together for Saeed’s entire life. Their experiences of time were closely connected, but now the father sees a different future that allows for only one of them to move forward.