Isn't this what writers do as well, when they enter the minds of their characters? The exile will always be at least slightly alien to her adopted culture. At the same time, her knowledge of that new place and its people is immersive; she is not a tourist and she can never really return to the person she was before she left home.
In My Friends, Matar invents the story of Khaled Abd al Hady, a Libyan who finds himself stranded in the U.K. after being shot in front of the Libyan embassy in London. His misfortune is based on a real incident that has largely been forgotten: In 1984, Libyan officials sprayed gunfire on a group of demonstrators who had gathered on the street below the embassy.
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