He couldn't understand these foreigners. They could go to a nice hotel, have a clean bed, go to the beach or the pool, and here they were in the wors… - Laila Lalami

When you move into a new place, it does involve a refashioning of the self. We derive our sense of identity at least partly in relation to the landscape around us, in which we’ve grown up..…

(about The Other Americans) It’s a book that really questions how we remember one another on a personal level, but also on a public level. You can take an event, like the Iraq war – which figures in the book – and people even today are shaping it and remembering it and contextualizing it in very different ways depending on their views. So history itself is an argument, and we are still litigating it many different ways. (2019)

But, he tried to tell himself, maybe this was just a fleeting interest, maybe it would all go away.