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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