These are the times we live in (I) Summary & Analysis
by Imtiaz Dharker

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  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Introduction

    • In "These are the times we live in (I)," British-Pakistani poet Imtiaz Dharker reflects darkly on discrimination and Islamophobia in the early 21st century. The poem follows a speaker (implied to be a voice for Dharker herself) as they face a border agent at an airport. The prejudiced agent is suspicious of the speaker because of their foreign-sounding name and their travel history, and he makes no secret of his suspicion: he rudely stares the speaker down, comparing them to their passport photo at length. Such humiliating treatment, the speaker reflects, is "a sign of the times we live in": the early 21st century, a time when the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the wars that followed fed a terrible explosion of xenophobia and Islamophobia in the western world. Dharker published this poem in her 2006 collection The Terrorist at My Table.

  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Summary

    • The speaker describes handing over their passport at border control. The officer looks at their face and flips to the last page of the passport to check all the stamps. The speaker reflects that they could take offense at this, but at last feels resigned to it: it only makes sense, they say, considering the times we're living in.

      The speaker feels reduced to nothing but their passport. They can see what the officer is thinking: That name is suspicious, it's got a Z in it, and this address changed recently. I think this person's birthmark moved positions. Nothing he notices about the speaker seems quite right to him. But what, the speaker reflects, can you expect? This kind of scrutiny is a sign of the times we're living in.

      Right in front of the speaker's face, the officer flips to the photograph page and looks at the speaker mistrustfully.

      Now the speaker feels they have to laugh. Sarcastically, they imagine that they must have changed completely while they were on the airplane: their chin must have been reshaped and their hair restyled. Someone must have erased their mouth and their eyes. Something must have transformed them.

      The only thing left behind after this remodeling is the border officer's mistrustful expression, because he doesn't think the speaker matches their photograph. The photograph is collapsing. It shows the speaker's features, but it leaves out their heart.

      Half of the speaker's face breaks off and floats onto a page of today's newspaper.

      As it lands, it makes a rustling noise.

  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Themes

    • Theme The Cruelty and Irrationality of Discrimination

      The Cruelty and Irrationality of Discrimination

      “These are the times we live in (I)” describes a tense encounter at a border control gate. The speaker—presented in the second person as “you," so the reader is invited to stand in their shoes—faces a border agent who reads their passport, stares boldly at them, and clearly suspects them of being up to no good. All that suspicion is founded on one thing: the speaker, to the agent, appears to be Muslim, and the poem takes place in the Islamophobic political climate of the early 21st century. Such racist and Islamophobic prejudice, the poem suggests is reductive, dehumanizing, and absurd.

      The poem's speaker isn't surprised when a border agent at an airport eyes them suspiciously. This behavior is par for the course in the “times we live in,” they say: in other words, they’ve encountered exactly this kind of prejudice plenty of times before. (The implication is that the poem takes place around when it was published in 2006, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the wars that followed them. In the western world, a terrible torrent of Islamophobic discrimination followed these events.)

      Though this behavior is so familiar to the speaker that they don't even have it in them to be "offended" at first, it's also inhumane and plainly ridiculous. Imagining what the man might be thinking about them, the speaker "can see his mind working" on the fact that, for instance, their name “contains a Z” (that is, it isn't a standard English name) and they "just moved house"—a moment that suggests just how broad, blunt, and childish the agent's stereotypes are. Plenty of his fellow citizens don't have traditional English names, and plenty of them might have recently moved. But blinded by his prejudice, the agent can see only a type of person in the speaker—a type he's prejudiced against, so that he gropes for reasons not to trust them.

      The situation becomes especially painful (and especially absurd) when the agent stares hard at the speaker’s passport photo to judge whether they “match [their] photograph.” The speaker “really ha[s] to laugh” at the agent’s ludicrous suspicion: they would have to have been “made […] over completely” on the airplane not to match their picture. Though the speaker laughs, this is also clearly a painful and humiliating experience. Under the agent's gaze, the speaker feels as if they "shrink to the size / of the book in his hand," becoming nothing but a passport to him. He simply refuses to see their humanity and individuality. Prejudice, the poem thus suggests, is reductive, illogical—and seriously damaging.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-39
    • Theme The Burden of Prejudice

      The Burden of Prejudice

      At first, the poem’s speaker doesn’t even have it in them to be “offended” when the border agent they’re confronting at an airport starts to suspiciously flip through their passport. As a person from a Muslim country in a post-9/11 world, they are all too familiar with racism and Islamophobia. That doesn't mean, however, that the experience doesn't hurt and humiliate them. Dealing with prejudice, this poem suggests, can eat away at a person's sense of self, safety, identity, and community.

      Even though the speaker feels wearily familiar with the agent’s behavior, they still feel terribly small and unseen as he examines them. In the eyes of this xenophobic man, the speaker “shrink[s] to the size / of the book in his hand”: they feel as if they’re nothing more than the nationality stamped on their passport.

      The pain of this experience only worsens as the agent stares intently at the speaker's passport photo, as if the speaker's whole face might somehow have been "made [...] over completely" while they were on the airplane. The agent's suspicion here is so patently absurd that the speaker "really ha[s] to laugh." But though they laugh, they also feel wounded. In reading the speaker so suspiciously, the agent “misse[s] out [their] heart,” erasing their humanity and individuality.

      The speaker gets at the pain of this experience with an image of "half [their] face split[ting] away" and landing on the "page of a newspaper / that's dated today." This vision suggests that they feel a huge part of themselves going unseen—or mis-seen. The border agent can see them only as the kind of face that you might see on the front page of a newspaper over an article about terrorism. That reductive reading of them makes them feel torn in half, both injured and reduced to something less than a whole person.

      The very fact that the speaker wearily accepts this pain as "a sign of the times we live in" itself suggests how burdensome it is to endure prejudice. To face a world that constantly treats you as an object of suspicion and judgment is to feel small, hurt, and unseen on a daily basis. For that matter, it means having a sadder, bleaker view of the world around you. The speaker knows that they're surrounded by people like this border agent, people who refuse to see the complete, complex human beings standing in front of them.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 4-10
      • Lines 18-19
      • Line 23
      • Lines 33-39
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “These are the times we live in (I)”

    • Lines 1-8

      You hand over ...
      ... we live in.

      “These are the times we live in” is written in the second person: the protagonist here isn’t an “I” or a “she,” but a “you.” Readers are thus invited to imagine themselves in the position of the person this poem describes—a person who is standing at airport border control in an unnamed country, “hand[ing] over [their] passport” to a suspicious officer. (For simplicity’s sake, we’ll still refer to this “you” as “the speaker” in this guide.)

      Even in the first couple of lines, there are hints that that this is going to be a humiliating, infuriating experience:

      • Readers can tell the border agent is stereotyping and racially profiling the speaker because, after a brief "look[] at [their] face," he flips to the “last page” of their passport. In other words, one look at this speaker and the officer decides he should scrutinize their entire travel history.
      • In fact, in a metonym, the passport becomes the speaker here: the agent starts "reading you backwards from the last page." The agent treats the speaker's passport, in other words, as if their nationality and proof of ID is all there is to them.
      • Readers can thus gather that this speaker must visibly belong to an ethnicity the officer has certain racist suspicions about. Perhaps the reader might guess that this experience is one that’s all too familiar to Imtiaz Dharker, a Pakistani writer who emigrated to the UK as a small child.

      The speaker accepts this hostile treatment with weary familiarity. “You could be offended,” they reflect—but what’s the point? “Given the times we live in,” this kind of treatment “makes as much sense / as anything else.”

      That resignation to being treated poorly in a world that clearly doesn’t make much sense at all helps to place this poem in time. Dharker published this poem in 2006, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the U.S. invasion of Iraq—and a wave of intense Islamophobia and racism that meant Muslim people (and any brown-skinned person who might be ignorantly stereotyped as a Muslim) faced intense scrutiny, exclusion, and cruelty all across the Western world.

      This speaker’s sigh that the border official’s nonsensical stereotyping “makes as much sense / as anything else” thus feels like a bigger sigh over the bewildering, tragic state of the world. Terrorism, war, clueless discrimination: it’s all part of the big ugly package that makes up “the times we live in.” Nothing is going well, and this personal insult is just one small corner of a nasty bigger picture.

      Dharker’s choice to use the second person in this poem insists that all readers step into the shoes of the person being profiled at a border, feeling the humiliation and weary resignation as their own. And the lack of further detail here—what border this is, for instance—makes it clear that this experience is not a fluke. A person who fits the stereotyped bill, whether because they come from a predominantly Muslim country (like the Pakistani Dharker) or simply because they have brown skin, might have a similar experience at any number of borders.

      As well as being an all-too-real experience for a lot of people, the confrontation at the border this poem describes has a symbolic weight. Whether or not you’re allowed to cross a border might also here suggest the question of whether or not you’re treated as a fellow citizen, a member of a shared society.

      Dharker will explore this experience in free verse, with no rhyme scheme or meter. The poem’s form will instead change shape to mirror the speaker’s feelings as they undergo this humiliating experience. For instance, the rhythm of the lines “it makes as much sense / as anything else,” with their steady pace and even length, helps to suggest the speaker’s total lack of surprise at the discrimination they face.

    • Lines 9-15

      You shrink to ...
      ... arm or leg.

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    • Lines 16-19

      Nothing is quite ...
      ... we live in.

    • Lines 20-22

      In front of ...
      ... at you suspiciously.

    • Lines 23-30

      That's when you ...
      ... you over completely.

    • Lines 31-35

      And all that's ...
      ... out your heart.

    • Lines 36-39

      Half your face ...
      ... as it lands.

  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Symbols

    • Symbol The Passport

      The Passport

      The speaker’s passport becomes a symbol of alienation and dehumanization. The small-minded, racist border agent in this poem treats the speaker as if they're nothing but a passport. Flipping through the speaker's travel history, to him, is "reading [the speaker]," not just reading where they've been: this ID document becomes the speaker's whole identity in his hands. This treatment makes the speaker feel diminished, "shrink[ing them] to the size of the book in his hand." Symbolically speaking, it's as if their whole self is at the mercy of a deeply prejudiced system that simply doesn't see them as a person.

      That feeling gets all the more acute as the border agent takes a long hard look at the speaker, comparing them to their passport photo. Under this gaze, the speaker starts to feel as if they’re “coming apart.” The photo is them, of course. But they can also imagine it through the agent’s eyes, and to him, this photo looks like a totally different person. For the agent, this photograph looks not like a photograph of the real live person in front of him, but like the kind of photo one might see on the “page of a newspaper” under headline news about dreadful crimes.

      The passport thus starts to represent the gap between how an Islamophobic world sees the speaker and how the speaker really is. The speaker feels shredded by the way the agent looks at them and their photograph: through his stereotyping eyes, the speaker’s “heart” simply isn’t visible. There’s a big space between who they really are and how they’re seen; the stereotypical image the agent sees in that photograph is not who they are.

      Where this symbol appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-3: “You hand over your passport. He / looks at your face and starts / reading you backwards from the last page.”
      • Lines 9-10: “You shrink to the size / of the book in his hand.”
      • Lines 21-22: “he flicks to the photograph, / and looks at you suspiciously.”
      • Lines 31-35: “all that's left is his look of surprise, / because you don't match your photograph. / Even that is coming apart. / The pieces are there / but they missed out your heart.”
      • Lines 36-39: “Half your face splits away, / drifts on to the page of a newspaper / that's dated today. / It rustles as it lands.”
  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Metaphor

      The poem’s metaphors help to show how dehumanized the speaker feels in the face of the border agent's suspicion. From the very first stanza, the agent reduces the speaker to their passport: as the speaker puts it, when they hand over their passport, he “starts reading [them] / backwards from the last page.” In this metaphor (which is also an example of metonymy), the speaker is their travel document to the agent: their nationality and their movements are all this guy can see about them. “You shrink to the size / of the book in his hand,” the speaker goes on, suggesting that this experience feels humiliating and diminishing.

      Under the agent's scrutiny, the speaker starts feeling divided from their own real identity, an idea they explore through the image of their passport photograph. When the agent looks dubiously between this photograph and the speaker’s face, the speaker “has to laugh” at his obvious (and racist) suspicion. But it’s a sad laugh. This photo, they reflect, “misse[s] out their heart.” In other words, the agent can’t see the speaker’s humanity and feelings as he looks at their photo. The speaker’s metaphorical heart simply isn’t visible to this man: he can’t see the speaker as a complete person.

      That makes the speaker feel split in half, divided from themselves—an image the speaker makes concrete in the poem’s closing metaphor, in which “half [the speaker’s] face splits away” and “drifts on to the page of a newspaper.” Here, the speaker can see their face as the agent sees it: as the kind of face you might see on a front page, accused of terrorism. This imaginary newspaper is “dated today,” the speaker says: this perspective is just another sad sign of the “times we live in.”

      Where metaphor appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-3: “He / looks at your face and starts / reading you backwards from the last page.”
      • Lines 9-10: “You shrink to the size / of the book in his hand.”
      • Lines 33-35: “Even that is coming apart. / The pieces are there / but they missed out your heart.”
      • Lines 36-39: “Half your face splits away, / drifts on to the page of a newspaper / that's dated today. / It rustles as it lands.”
    • Repetition

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      Where repetition appears in the poem:
      • Line 8: “given the times we live in.”
      • Line 19: “It's a sign of the times we live in.”
    • Enjambment

      Where enjambment appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-2: “He / looks”
      • Lines 2-3: “starts / reading”
      • Lines 5-6: “decide / it”
      • Lines 6-7: “sense / as”
      • Lines 9-10: “size / of”
      • Lines 14-15: “recently / to”
      • Lines 16-17: “same / as”
      • Lines 37-38: “newspaper / that's”
    • Assonance

      Where assonance appears in the poem:
      • Line 8: “given,” “live in”
      • Line 11: “mind”
      • Line 12: “eye”
      • Line 19: “sign,” “times”
      • Line 24: “While,” “flying”
      • Line 26: “chin”
      • Line 27: “redid”
      • Line 28: “scrubbed”
      • Line 29: “rubbed,” “eyes”
      • Line 31: “surprise”
      • Line 32: “match,” “photograph”
      • Line 33: “that”
      • Line 36: “face,” “away”
      • Line 37: “page,” “newspaper”
      • Line 38: “dated today”
    • Parallelism

      Where parallelism appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “You”
      • Line 4: “You”
      • Line 9: “You”
      • Line 11: “You”
      • Line 26: “they”
      • Line 27: “and”
      • Line 28: “They”
      • Line 29: “and”
      • Line 30: “They”
  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • The times we live in
    • The book
    • It contains a Z
    • Just moved house
    The times we live in
    • (Location in poem: Line 8: “the times we live in”; Line 19: “the times we live in”)

      An allusion to the circumstances in the years around this poem's first appearance. Dharker published this poem in 2006, when (in the wake of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001) the western world saw a terrible burst of Islamophobia.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “These are the times we live in (I)”

    • Form

      "These are the times we live in (I)" is the first poem in Imtiaz Dharker's three-poem sequence of the same title. Each of these poems deals with Islamophobia in the early 21st century. In this opening piece, a speaker meets with rude suspicion from a border agent while traveling—an experience that painfully reflects the "times we live in."

      The poem is written in free verse. That means that it doesn't use a regular rhyme scheme or meter but rather unfolds in an organic, loosely structured way. Dharker uses this form's flexibility to create drama—for instance, by using changing stanza lengths to highlight moments of suspense.

      The poem uses seven stanzas, ranging from just one to ten lines long. The movement from longer to shorter stanzas often marks moments of particular intensity. When the border control officer takes a long look at the speaker's passport photo, for instance, he does so over just three lines (lines 20-22, "In front of you [...] looks at you suspiciously"). Depicting this moment in such a small, concentrated space, Dharker suggests the tense silence that rises up as this nasty man gives the speaker a long stare.

      Dharker's use of the second person here (that is, her choice to frame the poem as something that is happening to "you") makes the story feel particularly immediate. This poem seems likely to be at least semi-autobiographical, considering the "Z" in both the protagonist's and the author's names. But Dharker asks the reader to step into her shoes, sharing an uncomfortable first-hand experience of confronting xenophobia and Islamophobia at a border. The reader is invited to imagine their way into the anger, the sorrow, and the bleak humor of getting profiled.

    • Meter

      There's no meter in this free verse poem. Rather than sticking to a steady beat, Dharker uses changing line lengths and stanza shapes to give the poem its rhythm.

      For instance, in the third stanza, where the border officer looks suspiciously at the speaker's passport photograph, the lines have a cool, deliberate pace:

      In front of you,
      he flicks to the photograph,
      and looks at you suspiciously.

      These slow, careful end-stopped lines feel fittingly steady and unhurried. This man has no problem giving the speaker an insulting once-over right "in front of [them]," and the way Dharker breaks down this sentence—one clause at a time, a line for each—suggests just how insultingly thorough he's being as he profiles the speaker, treating them like a potential criminal simply because they come from a predominantly Muslim country.

      Toward the end of the poem in lines 37-38, meanwhile, an enjambment supports the poem's tone, stressing the speaker's sorrow and frustration:

      Half your face splits away,
      drifts on to the page of a newspaper
      that's
      dated today.

      By enjambing the line "a newspaper / that's dated today," the speaker draws special attention to the words "dated today"—words that hearken back to the poem's title and its repeated line about the "times we live in." Those times, this speaker knows all too well, are Islamophobic ones.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      While there's no regular rhyme scheme in this poem, there is plenty of rhyme. Toward the end of the poem, when the speaker is rolling her eyes over the border officer's suspicion of her photograph, flashes of rhyme highlight the dark comedy of the moment—and the speaker's real pain. Take this passage from lines 28-35, for instance:

      They scrubbed out your mouth
      and rubbed out your eyes.
      They made you over completely.

      And all that's left is his look of surprise,
      because you don't match your photograph.
      Even that is coming apart.
      The pieces are there
      but they missed out your heart.

      The internal rhyme of scrubbed out / rubbed out feels aggressive, capturing the energy of this vigorous erasure. The end rhymes between eyes / surprise and apart / heart, meanwhile, slow this passage down and ask speakers to pay special attention to what's really at stake here. The Islamophobic border agent completely overlooks the speaker's "heart" (their sincere sense of self and their true feelings).

  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Speaker

    • This poem is written in the second person: its speaker describes events happening to “you," while still seeming to recount their own experience. This choice invites readers to step into the speaker’s shoes as they wait patiently at border control, being not-so-subtly humiliated and dehumanized by a nasty little man behind a desk.

      One of the things that readers can gather about this speaker’s identity—in spite of the fact that it’s never stated outright in the poem—is that they likely have a lot in common with Imtiaz Dharker. The poem drops a hint about this when it observes that the name on the speaker’s passport has a Z in it. But the whole scenario here also makes it clear that the poem’s protagonist is, like the poet, a person born in a Muslim-majority country (like Dharker’s native Pakistan).

      The speaker doesn’t need to spell out that the border agent is thinking Islamophobic, discriminatory thoughts as he slowly examines their passport photograph. The poem’s weary allusions to the “times we live in” make it clear that this poem is dealing with the way the western world got crueler to Muslim (or stereotypically “Muslim-looking”) people in the early 21st century, when this poem was published.

      The speaker is clearly furious and sad about the way the border agent treats them. But they can also see the dark humor in it all. They “have to laugh” when the agent suspiciously eyes their passport photo and launch into a sarcastic fantasy about everything that would have to have happened on the airplane for them to no longer look like their picture. This dark humor comes across as a coping mechanism, a way to deal with an experience that erodes the speaker's sense of self, of belonging, and of safety.

  • “These are the times we live in (I)” Setting

    • The poem is set at border control in an airport—a tense and highly political setting. Importantly, the speaker doesn’t specify which border control in which country. Readers familiar with Imtiaz Dharker’s background as a Pakistani immigrant to the UK might imagine that this poem draws on her personal experience of coming home after a visit to family abroad. But by refusing to specify exactly where its events are happening, the poem also makes it clear that the racism this poem’s speaker faces isn’t confined to any one country.

      The events of this poem are, however, connected to a particular time—the “times we live in.” Dharker published this poem in 2006, and it clearly responds to the dreadful world events of the early 21st century: the September 11 attacks in 2001, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the discrimination against Muslim people (and, stereotypically, brown-skinned people in general) that burgeoned in the wake of these tragedies. The experience Dharker describes is recognizably part of the post-9/11 world, in which getting through airport security and border control became a fraught and frequently racist experience.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “These are the times we live in (I)”

      Literary Context

      Imtiaz Dharker is a British poet who was born in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan, in 1954. She grew up primarily in Glasgow, Scotland, where her family moved when she was a year old. Dharker studied at the University of Glasgow, graduating with an M.A. in English Literature and Philosophy. She has won many awards for her poetry, including a 2011 Cholmondeley Prize and a 2014 Queen's Gold Medal, and serves as a member of the Royal Society of Literature. Alongside her writing, Dharker works as an artist and a documentarian.

      Dharker has published numerous books of verse, including the 2006 The Terrorist at my Table, in which this poem was first collected. Her poems often deal with questions of identity, cultural displacement, and community. This collection in particular examines life as an immigrant with roots in a Muslim country living in the west in the early 21st century. "These are the times we live in (I)" is, as its title suggests, the first in a sequence of poems dealing with this theme.

      Historical Context

      Dharker published “These are the times we live in”—the first of a three-poem sequence by the same title—in 2006, not long after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In these attacks, members of the Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda hijacked passenger airplanes and used them to destroy buildings, razing New York’s World Trade Center and a part of the Pentagon. Thousands of people died. The U.S. was deeply shaken by an unprecedented attack on its own terrain and civilians.

      Soon thereafter, George W. Bush, then president of the United States, used these attacks as an excuse to mount the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. This was the beginning of a war that many protested: Iraq had no provable involvement in the September 11 attacks, and many of the government’s justifications for this war—notably the claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons—were false.

      In the wake of these events, Islamophobia and racism burgeoned in the western world. Particularly at borders and in airports, Muslims (and, more generally, people who looked, to the racist observer, like the stereotypical idea of a Muslim) faced discriminatory scrutiny and suspicion not just from border agents but also from their fellow citizens.

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