A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing… - Laila Lalami

I had been pushed further and further into a fate from which no escape or reprieve seemed possible. And so there came a moment when I stopped struggling, when I decided that I would cease making any more plans to return to the old days. I made up my mind to look upon the present as exactly what it was: it was all I had. (p232)

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..…

in those days, I fed my hopes of freedom in whichever way I could, without realizing that I was only hooking myself to different lures. (p88)