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Saad Omar Khan, Drinking the Ocean, Buckrider Books, 2025. 250 pgs.

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all of this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography—to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

—Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient.

The idea of longing is often associated with pain—a searing pain that defies articulation.

Yet there is beauty in it—in the waiting, the yearning, the spiritual cleansing. None of it, however, is easy; waiting does not always yield fruit. In the Islamic tradition, as in most faiths, one must hope and wait—the outcome lies in the hands of God. This does not absolve the individual from striving towards their goal, but neither does it guarantee its attainment. Waiting, irrespective of the context, is painful. No one likes to wait. And yet, we are made to wait—in life, at airports, at bus stops, in refugee camps, between jobs, or even for the end of the world. Waiting gives life its shape; it can also be wielded as a tool of power by the sadistic. It may be tempting to read Drinking the Ocean as a failed romance, but to do so would strip it of its beauty and intricacy.

The novel opens with a young man, Murad, longing for his former love, Sofi. She was never truly his lover—merely a possibility who failed to return his affection in time. Both Murad and Sofi are grappling with trauma, which resurfaces upon their reunion. Their longing becomes a pursuit, and the melancholy it births colours the course of their lives. They continue forward, tethered to a past over which they had little control and from which they carry much heartache. Born to Pakistani immigrant parents, Murad and Sofi are shaped by certain cultural norms while also contending with deeply personal wounds. Immigrants often endure hardship in lands not their own, and that loneliness permeates the entirety of their existence. Life in Canada feels, for them, like inhabiting a stranger’s body.

Both relocate to London for their studies, bringing with them their distinct identities as well as a collective sense of self—and most of all, the desire to escape their solitude. Sofi carries the trauma of having lost her brother in a road accident; Murad, meanwhile, simply longs for a sense of belonging. In their early encounters, Sofi seeks her brother in Murad’s presence. When they meet, it is not love or romance that takes precedence—it is the absence that defines them both.

Drinking the Ocean is an exploration of a love that exists independently, untethered by obligation. It is a love that endures on its own terms, neither confined by romantic convention nor bound by marriage. It persists because no external compulsion sustains it—only an acceptance of time and destiny. The novel’s brilliance lies in its portrayal of this profound love, which is, in many ways, more patience than passion. The ocean is boundless—and so too is love. The experience of deep love is as vast and unknowable as the sea.

Their separation is a moment of awakening—an epiphany, a realisation that love is not the source of happiness people often imagine it to be. Love is a constructed agony; its presence and its absence alike bring joy and sorrow. To love is to inhabit contradiction—to live within the binary of delight and grief. They part in order to confront their innermost selves, and in doing so, experience a love and life that transcends the physical.

In the end, we learn that Sofi is now a teacher, living alone, still loving Murad—though no longer yearning for him. She embraces a different form of love, one that need not culminate in marriage or manifest in tangible ways. Despite its losses, the novel is neither melancholic nor despairing. On the contrary, it is a work of hope—of finding joy in attachment and recognising love as multifaceted. Love, in its many forms, is not driven by outcome; it exists freely, without possession.

It is refreshing to encounter a novel about Muslims in the West that does not centre on religious identity. Murad and Sofi are readers, lovers of poetry and culture, individuals with tastes and temperaments—they are not defined solely by faith. That, in itself, renders the novel as political as it is personal. Above all, however, Drinking the Ocean is a celebration of love and beauty.

How to cite: M, Fathima. “A Love that Doesn’t Bind: Saad Omar Khan’s Drinking the Ocean.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 8 Aug. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/08/08/drinking-ocean.

Fathima M  teaches English literature in a women’s college in Bangalore, India. She likes hoarding books and visiting empty parks. [Read all contributions by Fathima M.]

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