According to statistics, Canada is one of the countries with the most immigrants. They come from almost every coin of the world and have very different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. A common problem that all of them have to face would be: how to adapt to a new culture that is completely different from theirs? In the short story “Squatter”, the author Ministry Rohinton has led readers to think about how to answer. By telling an interesting story about an immigrant who cannot go to toilet, Rohinton comes up with the idea that immigrants can feel pull between two worlds, not fully belonging in either. The sense of not belonging could be caused by physical difficulties, social problems, mental pressure and disability of adapting to the changes of old place. Immigrating to another country means first of all changing the lifestyle.
Sometimes it is pretty natural and takes no time. In other cases, the adapting process may be very difficult. Someone could even feel that they have to abandon the old lifestyle in exchange of the new. Anyhow, to get rid of old habits is never easy, and neither is learning new things. Even some little things like different taste of food or different material used in clothing could cause trouble. As a matter of fact, immigrants can feel not belonging to a world due to physical difficulties.
In this story, the main physical difficulty the protagonist experience is, ironically, inability of sitting on the toilet. The author describes about his situation on page 153: “We find him (Sarosh) depressed and miserable, perched on top of the toilet, crouching on his haunches, feet planted firmly for balance (… ) Daily for a decade had Sarosh suffered this position.” Cannot sit on the toilet is probably not a big deal. However, it makes him feel different from the others. He is doing something nobody else in the country does. He is a stranger.
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This physical inability defends him from becoming a really Canadian. In fact, Sarosh is not the only immigrant suffering physical difficulties. In the story, the officer at the immigration department mentions about several similar cases. There were a man who could not eat Canadian bread; a Sri Lankan woman who could not drink Canadian water; and a Pakistani family who could not swallow since immigrating to Canada. All of these things are just natural for native Canadians, but not as easy as they appear for immigrants from other cultures. Thus, immigrants could be kept outside the society due to these little, not important physical problems they experience.
New immigrants do not only have to adapt to the new environment physically. It seems to be more important to have a good relationship with other people in the society. Again, it may be very easy for some, and very hard for others. Some immigrants may experience the feeling of not belonging due to social problems. In the short story “Squatter”, Sarosh, the protagonist is currently facing a difficult situation. Every time he uses a public toilet, the absence of feet below the stall door creates a strange atmosphere.
People look at him like a foreigner, who is “not doing things in the conventional way” (p 156).
Sarosh too detects ” the presence of xenophobia and hostility” (156).
Nobody is able to stay indifferent if other people look at him as a monster. Their attitudes may let him feel being rejected by the society. Furthermore, Sarosh also has to face problems at work.
He spends hours and hours in the bathroom every morning trying to get the sitting position and always fails. This causes him even new troubles. He is late for work for eleven times in a month. And he feel ashamed to tell the supervisor the truth. This leads to his misunderstanding to Sarosh. Later on, Sarosh is not just late in the morning but extends to spend working hours in the bathroom.
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Lacking communication and convincing explanation, he was finally fired. In this story, the problem of being late for work is mostly caused by problem going to the toilet. Still, it reflects to the entire immigrant population. Every immigrant may have some kind of personal difficulty that makes the communication with other people becoming more difficult. In this situation, immigrants easily become victim of the feeling of being an outsider, because of social problems.
One’s emotion is related closely to the kind of life he has. Immigrants often want to fully become a member of the country. Sometimes culture difference and other obstacles may lengthen the time the process takes. It takes respectively a lot of time for them to become emotionally suitable to the new place.
If they see themselves unable to well adapt, they may get stressed mentally. In “Squatter”, Sarosh is unhappy from the start to the end of the story. At the beginning, the author describes him as “depressed and miserable” (p 153).
It’s the physical inability that depresses him here. He’s been living in Canada for a decade and is still not completely a Canadian. He feels that “he (Sarosh) was nothing but a failure in this land (Canada) – a failure not just in the washrooms of the nation but everywhere.” From this quote, we understand that this tiny physical difficulty means the complete failure for Sarosh.
The sense of failure depresses him and stressed him. It is true that in this particular case, the reason that Sarosh is willing of becoming completely Canadian is mostly because of the promise he made to his mother. But he is still a representative example of the entire Canadian immigrant collective. Since a lot of other immigrants also feel stressed mentally. It can be proved by the travel agent’s words. She says: ” I meet so many people who are going back to their homeland because of problems here” (p 163).
This shows that there are many immigrants who abandon Canada for varies problems in Canada. They are mentally tired of dealing with them and they finally give up. Native Canadians can never imagine how those problems are hard to be solved. Further more, Sarosh does not always see himself as a Canadian. This can be proved by his words: ” That’s the way THEY talk over there, nothing is ever a problem.” From the word ‘they’, we can see that Sarosh excludes himself from the Canadians. He does not like some of people’s attitudes in Canada.
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He does not see himself as one of them either. It is part of the reason that he decides to return to India. The above arguments all show that the mental conflict of belonging or not belonging can cause anxiety in immigrants. Finally, immigrants can feel not belonging to their original place either because of the changes of the place.
Sarosh in the short story has come back to his country- India. But he does not feel belonging to there any more, because everything has changed in his homeland. He notices that “during his absence all the brand names had changed- the labels were different and familiar” (p 167).
He notices that ” the people who sat on the parapet (… ) were strangers” (p 167).
He also notices that ” they (the tetra pods) were grimy black now, and from angularities rose the distinct stench of human excrement” (p 167).
These changes are not towards a positive side. Sarosh is not quite prepared for them. A lot of things are new and unfamiliar. He is desperately searching for the old things in his memory but he cannot find them.
It is like he has come to another unknown country. And the environment in the new country is not very pleasurable. Plus, people do not look at him the same way anymore. On the welcome-home party, they keep asking him to display the Canadian currency and his Canadian passport and citizenship card.
In their eyes, he is a foreigner now. The sense of not belonging disappoints Sarosh, ” so forlorn and woebegone was his countenance” (p 167).
The changes of the old place push immigrants out of their original world. In conclusion, due to physical, social and mental difficulties, immigrants can feel not belonging in either the new place or the native country. However, many people may be able to well mix the two cultures together. And they argue that immigrating is a process of searching for happiness….
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