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Friday, April 17, 2020

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence| Memories we Lost


 Is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?
There is a general tendency among human beings to always imagine that things are better in the other places that they hear of. They give little thought to the fact that the grass could be greener because people in there expend their energy to make their surrounding better. Therefore, they could also do the same and make the grass on their side as green. The most common recourse is to want to immigrate to these other areas


In the story Light, Enabeli's wife goes to USA so that she can get better employment on the strength of the foreign papers which are perceived to be better. Whereas indeed she gets the papers, she loses her home and probably her daughter. Her daughter undergoes a critical stage in life without her mother. As a result, the girl acquires certain undesirable habits. The distance also kills her marriage to Enabeli. It is true that her grass could have become greener, but for her husband it got worse.

In Almost Home, Ali Mahfouz had fled home apparently after committing a crime. He flees to Ireland using money hastily collected by his family, which he never repays. He spends years in Ireland doing menial labour and generally building no future. He was a conman, posing for a picture on Facebook, as if he was a medical student. His time of reckoning comes and he is arrested for being an illegal immigrant. On several occasions, he avoids being taken home by scaring passengers that he is a suicide bomber, so he is taken back overland and by sea. Faced with a real prospect of returning home to the brown grass with virtually nothing, he opts to jump into the ocean.

In Hitting Budapest, people have fled the country. We are told that Budapest is deserted and Mello seems to have come back to photograph the novelty of desperate children. The narrator talks of an auntie in America whom she hopes to join. However, she is derisively dismissed by Basta who says people go there to wash poop and work in nursing homes, so the grass may not be green after all. Basta would prefer to go to South Africa or Botswana with the rider so that it is easier to return if things go wrong. Therefore the prospects of greener grass are not very good there either.

In Missing Out, Majdy is in his paradise, the grass seems to be as green as he would ever want it to be. He can concentrate on getting an education because things work. Life is efficient and he has access to everything he needs in the library and the computer lab. But the country is certainly no paradise for his bride, Samra. She had been procured by Majdy's mother to cure his loneliness and to motivate him to work hard. But Samra finds it hard to fit in. The order, the convenience of well-packed groceries, the cut meat and liberal dressing hold no attraction to her. She would prefer the more laid-back existence of her country with all its imperfections. When her husband chooses to work in the new land but suggests she goes back home, she jumps at the offer. For her, the grass is certainly not greener at all on the other side.

For the narrator in The President, the grass is very green. The offer of life in Canada affords her a chance to get an education and support her family. It is a sweet escape from the refugee camps back in her country and the cruelty of war that made her lose her hands, get defiled and then lose the baby. She can get proper food and shelter in her new country.

Thus the adage the grass is greener on the other side of the fence does not always hold true. Sometimes, by luck, things can improve. However, the alien culture and the resentment by the natives can make life worse than what one has left behind.


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