Not too long before Netflix’s announcement that it had acquired the film rights to Mohsin Hamid’s best-selling novel, Exit West, I was talking to a writer-director friend. When the conversation turned to the dearth of original, local stories that could be adapted on film, my first thought was that Exit West would be perfect for the big screen. Easily the Pakistani novel most adaptable for a global film audience; it’s a story that says something important and could be great cinema. For a moment, between the two of us, it was fun to imagine the cast and crew who would best bring it to life, an all-Pakistani dream team, sort of like a fantasy-football roster, if money and opportunity were no object. Fawad Khan was cast as the lead, obviously.

So, when news of Netflix’s announcement filtered through my Twitter feed, there was first the vindication of having been validated, by Netflix and the Obamas no less. Even they agreed that this was a story that needed to be told. But then there was also something else. Suddenly, the dream team now seemed like minor-league minnows in front of the big-league goliaths – the ones bankrolled by endless cash and with direct access to hundreds of millions of paying customers around the world.

The book will be adapted by a production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama and, on the face of it, it’s a perfect fit. Its sympathetic perspective on immigration is the right shape for the pluralistic values of the Obama presidency and an antithesis to the one that followed it.

The novel was presciently released one year into the Trump presidency, when the topic of immigration had risen to fever-pitch all around the world. Its adaptation comes on the heels of news of perilous ocean-crossings, families rent asunder at the US-Mexico border and images of lifeless children washed up ashore. In Riz Ahmed, the movie would have a bonafide star – his stock much higher since the last time he starred in the adaptation of a Mohsin Hamid novel. He would bring quality and attention. Hiring Yann Demange, director of White Boy Rick and a French-Algerian immigrant himself, also bodes well.

So why does it still rankle, especially since any conversation of adapting this story in Pakistan with Pakistani actors is moot, given the state of our local film industry? Like a long comatose patient just come-to, the Pakistani film industry stands on unsteady and atrophied limbs. After two decades on life-support, the industry’s long suffering craftspeople have either moved on to other, more forgiving occupations or are in too precarious a position to take risks with story and form. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistan had 127 cinema screens, a pitifully low number for a country with our population. It would be fair to assume that the number would be much lower today after a year with few major releases and shut-downs. The setting of the novel stretches from Mykonos to London and California, and the idea that a Pakistani studio could mount a production of that size and nature would be wishful thinking. Even if they could, any attempt at a faithful adaptation would inevitably run into a censor-board that would ask for an immediate butchering.

It’s true that the West has always been telling our stories – filling our silence by turning our tragedies into spectacles and caricatures. But it’s hard to say that’s the case here because it’s hard to argue that Exit West is a Pakistani story, since its underlying political message is something anyone, anywhere can relate to.

It’s true that the West has always been telling our stories – filling our silence by turning our tragedies into spectacles and caricatures. But it’s hard to say that’s the case here because it’s hard to argue that Exit West is a Pakistani story, since its underlying political message is something anyone, anywhere can relate to. But its politics are also what endanger its film adaptation, especially since Hamid’s penchant for the topical and the political has come at the expense of his story’s adaptation before.

If Exit West was prescient, then its predecessor, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was born out of hindsight. A story about a Pakistani man who sets out into the world, only to get disillusioned and return, its film adaptation is weighed-down by the history it tries to tell at the expense of its characters. It takes its open-ended source material and adds a kidnapping sub-plot here, a scene with an angry mob there. And Mira Nair, who’d so deftly dealt with similar themes before in The Namesake, couldn’t keep it from being burdened by the need to simplify politics. The result is something that feels ham-fisted and impersonal. And if that movie is any indication, (India was used as a stand-in for Lahore) little to nothing of this movie will be shot in Pakistan either.

For Netflix, the movie would be a small part of a huge roster of films. It aims for blanket coverage of each demographic in its race with other large streaming services to the highest subscriber count. For the Obamas, it’s a story that broadcasts their own world-view to the largest number of people via film. Their first consideration would surely have been how neatly the film would fit into their own politics, rather than character. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that all of this is quibbling. After all, isn’t any attempt at sympathetic representation better than none at all?

But if it helps to understand, my own copy of Exit West was a parting gift from a friend before I boarded the outbound flight from Los Angeles to Lahore. It’s themes of loss, displacement and trying to find your place – rendered in beautiful, spare prose – found me at a time when I needed them. It’s difficult not to feel a little precious about it. That said, when the movie eventually comes up as a recommendation on Netflix, under the social drama/sci-fi category, I’ll be the first to watch it.

So if there’s a lesson here, it would have to be one of patience. Patience that the industry will rehabilitate itself. That the talent will return. That the censor boards will eventually tire and loosen their grip. And faith that the well isn’t yet dry and good stories will come. It just feels like it might be a long wait.

The writer is an   aspiring filmmaker and a graduate of the University of Southern California