My Friends

St. James’s Square is the setting where the 1984 embassy demonstration and shooting takes place. As Khaled was shot and wounded during the protest, he has a fraught relationship with the place and makes a concerted effort to avoid it in the years following his traumatic experience. The setting therefore symbolizes The Entanglement of Past and Present and reifies Khaled’s fraught relationship with this temporal era.

In the narrative present, he revisits the square for the first time in over 30 years. As soon as he returns, he sees himself as a young man “sitting there on the pavement, bleeding beside the drain” (263). The setting triggers his traumatic memories and emotional response to the shooting. In returning, he’s trying to reconcile himself with what happened to him years prior. At the same time, his avoidance of the square for so long captures his resistance to revisiting the scenes, experiences, and emotions of his past, because he fears that they will compromise his life in the present.

St. James’s Square also marks a turning point in Khaled’s storyline and narrative arc. Before he visits the square to participate in the demonstration, he’s a young man who’s just setting out into adulthood.