Chapters 11-12 Summary

Nadia and Saeed realize it is time to part ways. They say goodbye one drizzly morning outside their shanty. Saeed and the preacher’s daughter begin dating, while Nadia begins working at a food cooperative and takes one of the female cooks as a lover. Saeed and Nadia keep in touch at first, taking walks together. But eventually, they go “a lifetime” without speaking.

Meanwhile, a maid in Marrakesh chooses not to move to live with her daughter. She can’t bring herself to leave her home village.

Fifty years later, while visiting the city where they met, Nadia is “informed of the proximity of Saeed,” and they agree to meet. At a café, Nadia asks Saeed if he ever made it to Chile. He nods and offers to take her there. She says she would like that as they hug goodbye, neither knowing if they will ever see each other again.

Chapters 11-12 Analysis

Exit West’s final chapters introduce a new character, a maid in Marrakesh, who represents the opposite of migration—she remains in one place. Hamid pairs this final vignette with Saeed and Nadia’s reconnection, highlighting the comfort of feeling at home surrounded by familiar people and places. The end circles back to domesticity and the joy of building a peaceful life in what the author has called a “blueprint for humanity.”

Significantly, the details of Saeed’s and Nadia’s lives apart are omitted. Hamid stops the narration where their relationship ends to make readers feel the loss of intimacy between them. However, the author explicitly shows how technology makes this final meeting possible. In this way, Exit West is an homage to technology and its complicated relationship with time and space.