Chapter 2: In exile with"My Friends"
“Friend. What a word. Most use it about those they hardly know. When it is a wondrous thing.”
Sometimes, we read a well crafted sentence and the sequence of a few meaningful words provokes, moves, and makes us think more than anything else in the world. It is a strange phenomenon. But if you are someone who has spent a lifetime reading too much for your own good, you may sometimes ask yourself, what good is it to anyone? What precisely is the purpose of your reading and your hedonistic pleasure over symbols and shapes on a blank piece of paper? Where do the words of others begin in you, and how do they shape you, and who you become? Then, you come across a book so good that you can’t stop reading. And you intrinsically know the answers, as you go to re-read it again.
Hisham Matar’s My Friends begins with the protagonists Khaled Abd al Hady, dropping one of his closest friends Hosam Zowa, who migrating to the US, to a train station. This is probably their last meeting, one that is tinged with the heaviness of an ending. As Khaled walks back home, he starts to narrate the story of the last three decades of his life in London, and of his two closest friends.
Shifting across time and places, the tale begins in Benghazi, Libya, when a young Khaled wins a prestigious scholarship to study English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The novel is framed within the history of Libya from when Qaddafi came to power in 1969 and a few years after his downfall in 2011. From the start, a dictatorship and its mechanisms are omnipresent. At university, Khaled learns that all scholarship students from Libya are categorised. The ‘readers’ — who come to study, and the ‘wires’ or ‘writers’ — embedded as students, who actually spy and gather information on others, and report back to the state. The third category that comes to have a good time — the least controversial of all.
“The effectiveness of the system lay precisely in its vagueness. You remained on guard and in need of exoneration because you never could be absolutely certain what might land you in trouble and destroy the miraculous piece of good fortune of studying abroad.” The regime sows mistrust and paranoia, ensuring that people never drop their guard to form or maintain friendships, so they never come together against it.
As a student on a casual visit to London, Khaled finds himself at a protest outside the Libyan embassy. The protest which shapes his life is a real one, around which Matar builds the novel. This was a planned anti Qaddafi demonstration in April 1984, outside the Libyan Embassy in London, where 11 protesters were shot and a police woman murdered. The demonstration was against Qaddafi’s persecution and torture of students back in Libya.
In the novel, Khaled is persuaded by his friend Mustafa to accompany him to the protest, where both are shot at from inside the embassy. An instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, changes the course of their lives. After this, they cannot return to Libya, and the Libyan student body at their university has denounced the protestors as ‘traitors’. Stripped off his identity, Khaled is reduced from a promising and bright scholar to a political exile, dependent on the favours of others. Not only does he give up his past and present, but also the future. The core of this story is how Khaled rebuilds a life and forms his closest bonds with two individuals Mustafa and Hosam, who are his ‘friends’ from the title
Exile — the literal and the intellectual
Khaled’s suffocation with his own secret — the shooting — is palpable through the novel. Outside of a few, nobody (including those back in Libya) can ever know the truth. All communications with his family after the protest are under surveillance, letters tampered, and calls explicitly listened into. “At first, I thought I had imagined it, but then he cleared his throat again. I knew what he would say if he were to speak.” Khaled guesses that his family may have heard of the incident, but not of the extent of his involvement. Under the guise small talk and random references, the family communicates, while calculating the ways it could be interpreted by the silent eavesdropping companion.
Many novels depict the theme of exile, but the gentleness of Matar's writing makes his reader feel the term at a personal level. What does this translate to, especially over the span of decades? At one level, the curse of his exile is to keep finding remains of home in people and in alien places. A new friend reminds Khaled of his sister, who he desperately misses. The smells of the Mediterranean remind him of the smells of home. An office lined with books, where he sits for an academic interview, takes him to his father. Arabic spoken in the perfect Benghazi accent, remains the language closest to his heart. The places he belongs to, and the people who belong to him, are carried within him everywhere that he goes, along with the simple fact that he can never return.
At a deeper level, the novel is also about the intellectual exile faced by characters because of the controls of the Qaddafi regime on independent thought, within and outside Libya. People are exiled from the language, ideas, history, books, and the literature that they grew up with. Their intellectual lives and potential is stunted because of the insecure politics of the age.
We learn about Khaled’s father, a PhD and a historian. When Qaddafi assumes power, he turns down academic posts and lucrative positions and disappears into a job “that neither suited his talent nor his ambition” as a middle school history teacher, in a low income neighbourhood. We learn that his father, obsessed with the political history of the Arab world and the rise of nationalism, conducted his research in the dark, without ever publishing a word. His vocation was reduced to a private hobby, and despite loathing the regime, he lived a life of desperate caution. When Khaled moves to Edinburgh, his father cryptically warns him to stay far away from politics. “Don’t be lured in,” he said, the words emanating from his very core … The pupils of his eyes turned small and dark and slowly, in a barely audible tone, he said, “Don’t. Be. Lured. In.”’
Hosam Zowa, who had once inspired Khaled with his short story, publishes a book, and later gives up on his vocation. He is a literal and an intellectual exile, who wanders across countries doing odd jobs in bookstores or restaurants. Ruthless political realities and his own complex family history, lead him to become the worst casualty — the writer who does not write. As the novel progresses, we see Khaled defined by his passion for literature and books. If he had never been shot or had been from another country, would he have been a simple English school teacher? He concocts imaginary tales of his scholarly prowess and academic success for his family back home, and through it, we get a glimpse of what his life could have been. Dictatorship and its lackeys control the dreams and aspirations of its people. However, Khaled makes the best with what he can, settling into a role that cannot be controlled — that of a reader.
The ‘friends’
For most, the word ‘friend’ (when not thrown around casually) means something sincere and far deeper than is given credit. When it comes to depicting the variations of human relationships, across contemporary culture, there are ample multi-generational family sagas, odes to romantic and unrequited love, dissections of betrayals, longings, and other dramatic what nots… But one rarely comes across a tale of deep platonic friendships, and the pivotal positions they hold in most lives. But how does one plumb the depths of a relationship that is amorphous in nature, and untethered to blood, biology, or a legal contract?
Friendships form the spine of this novel. Khaled, Mustafa, and Hosam are united by their Libyan identity, shared ideological and political positions, love for literature, and exile from their homeland. However, they are separated by their temperaments and personalities, which reflects in the diverging life choices, and later in their responses to Libya's evolving politics.
We see each through Khaled’s eyes and come to understand them as he does. Mustafa, a firebrand and an activist, convinced Khaled to attend the protest and was also shot. Despite his eclectic friends and extroverted personality, he is Khaled's closest friend in their first decade in London. While the two once shared a passion for literature, Mustafa replaces it over the years with politics, activism, and fighting against the regime. He is involved in the Libyan opposition and joins its military wing, only to eventually return to London and build a career as real estate agent. His professional and personal choices often intersect with his politics as he gets more entrenched in the real world, while Khaled continues to see life through the prism of the literary.
This novel depicts friendships in an explicitly fraught political landscape. Here ideological positions define survival, and trust is not taken for granted; anyone can be a pretender, informal, or spy — part of Qaddafi’s secret services. If shared interests and history form strong bonds, then suspicions throw knots into it. Hosam Zowa becomes Khaled and Mustafa’s other friend, and the deepest influence in the former’s life. When Khaled first meets him by chance in Paris, there is mutual mistrust. As they exchange stories of life and family in Libya and the fateful London protest, the conversation eases. Khaled realises and is also moved by the fact that it was a short story written by Hossam that had influenced him to study Literature.
Despite this, Khaled notices Hosam’s palpable uneasiness. “In other words, whereas I was beginning to feel secure, he was perhaps still suffering the possibility that I had come here to trap him, that the crows who were about to emerge from the shadows would be mine.” It is later that Hosam tells Khaled that even before befriending him, he conducted a thorough background check on him. Much later, Khaled introspects that despite the shared loyalty and affection, there was mistrust and doubt stemming from circumstances, which also marked their friendship.
Khaled comes across as a moderate and pragmatic, who understands the political situation but is neither a bold fighter like Mustafa, not a cerebral intellectual like Hosam. “Each of my two closest and only Libyan friends stood at one extremity of my will. I could not help being Mustafa with Hosam, and Hosam with Mustafa, as though condemned to maintain their voices in some sort of balance.” It is interesting to see the shifts within this balance, through the scope of the novel.
Friendships come with their own language and actions. Childish possessiveness and jealousy, nostalgia, drunken declarations of mutual affection, conversations, stories, distances, grudges, misunderstandings… Matar’s writing is effective in capturing the unsayable, unspoken, and understood between old friends, especially under the weight of the insecurities within their lives. But with all the complexity, these are real friendships, which enable the isolated and displaced characters find remains of their lost home in one another, and reconcile with their reality.
This is the story specifically about male friendships, and while the female love interests hold significance, they are not the focus. An important female character in Khaled’s life is Rana, his friend from University. Initially a friendship formed on mutual interests, evolves into a deep bond between the two. Despite different life and career trajectories, they deeply care for one another through their worst. Again, rarely do we come across a realistic depiction of a platonic friendship between a man and woman that captures its significance and depth over time, without sinking into the stereotypical tropes of unrequited love or gratuitous romantic tensions.
Rana helps Khaled find his initial footing in London after the shooting. Years later, she calls Khaled to Paris to accompany her through a medical procedure, one that she hides from everyone (including her husband) as it would leave all distraught. Khaled, who understand the weight of secrets, drops everything to see her through. Overwhelmed, he tells her, “Thank you for asking me to come. It’s the greatest compliment anyone has paid to me.” What can be more moving for an exile, than the privilege of being trusted by a friend at her most vulnerable?
Living through Literature
One of the resounding themes of the novel is Khaled’s relationship with books, stories, and the writers who have influenced him. He doesn't just enjoy Literature, but at a deeper more personal level, lives through it, allowing it to shape him into the person that he is. He is excited to drink at the same pub as George Orwell, and live in Shepherd's Bush in London, because RL Stevenson lived there. When he becomes a student once again, he discovers the canonical works of English Literature. “I worried about not having strong opinions. The truth was, I did not care much for opinions. I wanted instead to be in the silent activity of a good book, to observe and to feel.”
When Khaled first met Mustafa, they were passionate students, however it was the shooting that cemented their bond. Meanwhile Khaled and Hosam’s friendship from the start is influenced, among other things, by their obsessive love for literature, and the fascination with the lives of writers in London.
Hosam, who doesn't believe in owning many books, notices Khaled’s large collection and remarks, “Like Montaigne, you believe that the very presence of books in your room cultivates you, that books are not only to be read but to be lived with.” Khaled connects Hosam’s borrowing, and staying within a selection to his rootlessness and a desperation to belong. “I got the impression that this was not only out of the desire to be frugal, to remain light, to be able at any moment to move, but also to be, if not rooted in a physical location, habitually residing in the same literary terrain, with its familiar quarters, loved lines half forgotten, and to know, over a lifetime, as much as possible about a few books, until they came to seem like a native land.”
Hosam creates a literary map of London, and when the two realise that many writers they admire once lived in close proximity to them, they go on a literary expedition, as if visiting the houses of their closest friends. We find references to Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, RL Stevenson, among many others. London, like these two friends, emerges as a character defined by its writers and its ruthless literary history, and this in turn helps build their relationship with each other, and with the city.
Khaled recognises the storyteller in Hosam and like all genuine friends, pesters him to write again. “I could not help believing him to be, at his most essential self, a writer. I often heard encouragement and admonishment braided into my voice. He heard it too.” Hosam too is haunted by the void in him after he gave up writing. “He began to speak of a discrepancy that existed, a growing and and unbridgable gulf, between the fact that he was no longer a writer and the ideas he continued to get for new works.”
The novel displays power of stories, which enables an exile to belong, even if only within the pages of books. This private space is devoid of time, region, nationality, or even a living author. The more Khaled reads, the more he understand the interconnected and universal nature of influence, inspiration, and progress, which is beyond narrow categorisations.
“I saw these cross correspondences and exchanges as threads weaving together the whole of literature, that nothing here was disparate. I began to see novels and poetry — indeed, the entire human event — not as a field of demarcations, made up of languages and periods and styles and schools and civilisations, but rather as a great river with its own internal ancestry…”
Matar is observant in capturing minor aspects, such the disillusionment of passionate readers towards their favourite writers, especially over their views. In one bit, Mustafa and Khaled attend a lecture by V.S. Naipaul, an author whose works they had endlessly discussed as students. As they arrive, Khaled leaves his scarf on a seat and they go to get a drink. When they return, their seats are taken by a couple. A furious Mustafa is convinced that the “arabesque patterns” of the scarf had a role to play. They then listen to Naipaul go on about the “evils of Muslims”. With their identity in focus, they stare at the bigotry as Mustafa says, “Why is it that all writers we admire let us down?”
Distance between a protester and his slogan
Friendships are based on shared interests, ideals, experiences, a past, among so much more. However each individual within it, is guided by her own temperament, especially in responding to the world. My Friends is a deep exploration of this theme, and it demonstrates how different individual temperaments intersect with the politics of the world at large. Matar skillfully contrasts the interiority of his protagonist with the exteriority of a world, and depicts how it is shaped as a response to the other.
Khaled, who was shot at St James Square has avoided the spot in all his time in London. When he returns 32 years later, he stands at the spot where he was “cut down” and he cannot remember the placard he selected from the pile, which included “FREE THE STUDENTS”, “DOWN WITH THE TYRANT”, and “FREEDOM OR DEATH”. Was he even the activist that he was assumed to be, just by casually showing up to a protest? Were his beliefs as strong, as to risk his life, identity, and loved ones? He explains to the reader, “A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; The entire history of politics exists in that gap.”
The later part is set around the Arab Spring of 2011. Mustafa travels to Libya and joins the revolutionary forces and becomes a fighter. Despite their previous differences, an inspired Hosam joins him in the battlefield. Closer than ever, they help shape the fate of the country and its future, while Khaled remains back in London, anxious for the outcome from his rented flat, full of books. He does not return. Maybe returning would mean challenging the life he has reconciled with, or simply confronting a past he worked hard to shut out. While we understand this choice, we never really know why.
Can we ever know anyone, let alone our closest friends on the same side of the political, ideological, and intellectual fence? Can we judge someone and hold them accountable for the innate difference in their temperament and how they respond to the world? Which response is justified in its impact on an individual life? Is resistance only demonstrated in fight or also in the quiet resilience to survive? This novel is a meditation on questions that are not straight, or limited to this plot. They emerge as the characters go through the many chapters of their lives.
While this is a novel framed by the large canvas of Libya’s history and politics, Matar could have written a sweeping historical and social novel, but he holds a controlled pen. Instead he tells the story through the individual. In the realm of time, three decades mean little, and the fates of three lives, mere dots within those years. But this novel digs into what it means to breathe each day and to exist as the irrelevant entity affected by, and later participating in the grander narratives.
My Friends is an outstanding book, one that has you pause every few pages to savour it. It is unabashedly literary and intellectual in its tone (and texture), intelligent in its craft, and ambitious in capturing the subtle interiority of people. It is a sincere love letter to friendships, and to the humanity that we hold for the people within the microcosms of our small ordinary lives, which makes it extraordinary. It re-instills faith in literature, books, ideas, and words, and demonstrates the impact of evocative writing on deep and passionate readers. Whether one is ‘just’ a voracious reader, a non-writing writer, or simply someone who was once shaped by books, My Friends asserts why we desperately need it all to live, to become, to build.
(PS: While I am a huge fan of all of Hisham Matar’s writing, particularly recommend A month in Sienna, a slim read around his deeply personal relationship with art. It’s a book for the soul.)
(PPS: Shout out to CSA!)