The Squatters

Summary

Set in the affluent suburbs of Surrey, England, The Squatters follows Dalia Waheed, a second-generation immigrant who appears to have achieved the perfect life. Married to a British husband and surrounded by the comforts of an upper-middle-class community, Dalia nevertheless feels disconnected from the world she inhabits and longs to do something meaningful.

While volunteering with a refugee resettlement organisation, Dalia meets Hajira, a heavily pregnant woman who has fled her home country with her husband in search of asylum in the United Kingdom. Moved by Hajira’s desperate circumstances and the inadequate accommodation provided to refugees, Dalia offers to help the couple find somewhere more suitable to live.

What begins as a compassionate gesture soon spirals into a complicated conflict that threatens Dalia’s marriage, friendships, and place in her community. As tensions rise, she must confront the limits of her idealism and decide how much she is truly willing to sacrifice for another woman’s safety and dignity.

Through the collision of these two families, Saba Brelvi explores displacement, belonging, motherhood, class privilege, and the moral responsibilities people have towards those seeking refuge. The novel asks difficult questions about compassion: whether it can survive when helping others threatens our own security, and what it really means to stand by our convictions.