Summary
Senay and Okwe eat dinner together, and Okwe asks about the letter that she received from New York. She tells him she has a cousin who writes to her. Okwe says he wishes London was more like New York, and Senay is impressed to hear he has been to New York before. "In the winter, they put lights on the trees, is that true?" Senay asks, and then asks Okwe what he did in New York. He worked in a hospital as a doctor, he tells her, and when she asks him why he is now working in a hotel, he tells her, "It is an African story."
"I've noticed you never answer 'yes' or 'no.' You are very strange," Senay says, and Okwe offers her wine. She tells him she left Turkey because she did not want to live like her mother, and then accepts some wine. Okwe tells her that the dinner is a recipe from Nigeria, and that there is pork in the meal, which upsets Senay, who cannot eat pork as a Muslim. "Of course I used lamb," he says, smiling as he notices Senay's face.
The next day, Okwe goes to the cab station and gives his boss the antibiotics for the venereal disease. The boss takes him to the back, where a number of other cabbies are complaining about the same disease. Okwe is exasperated, saying that his friend is just a porter at the hospital crematorium.
At 3AM, Okwe gets a call about room service at the front desk of the hotel, but the bellhop runs in and answers it before Okwe can tell them the kitchen is closed. In the kitchen, Okwe and the bellhop, Ivan, make a sandwich for the room service request. Okwe begins to ask Ivan whether there are any guests who have come into the hotel and never left, but Ivan says there is no one, before telling Okwe to remove the crusts of the sandwich, like at the Ritz.
"Everyone leaves, Okwe. Some leave quickly, some stay for long time," Ivan says. He then warns Okwe, somewhat threateningly, not to worry too much about who comes and goes. Ivan then puts some herbs on top of the white bread sandwich, saying, "It's the little touches that make a difference, that's capitalism!" He sends Okwe up to the room and tells him to accept only cash.
Okwe goes to the room and accepts cash from a woman there. He then rides the elevator to go to room 510. He opens the room and examines the toilet where he found the heart. As he examines the towels, he hears the door open and hides in the shower.
He hears the prostitute that he met the other night come in and call her client an "asshole." He peeks at the prostitute, as the client asks her to hurry up. "Have a drink first!" she insists, and goes back into the room. The client slaps her and she beats him up, spraying mace in his face. At this point, Okwe intervenes and pulls the prostitute off the man.
After he sends the man away, Okwe examines the prostitute, telling her she doesn't have a concussion. He tells her that he was checking the toilet and the prostitute introduces herself as Juliette. "Have you ever seen a lion?" she asks him, and he tells her, "On TV," which makes her laugh.
When Senay arrives at work, she gives Okwe his own key, a duplicate of her own. Okwe smiles as she scurries away.
Back at Senay's apartment, Okwe irons his shirt, as Senay comes into the apartment. She tells him to be discreet and make it seem like he sleeps on the floor. Suddenly, there's a knock on the door. The man knocking announces himself as an "immigration enforcement director," and Senay and Okwe scramble anxiously. Senay puts his linens in the oven and his bag in a closet, as he goes to hide.
She opens the door for the two officers, who look for her identification. One of the officers tells her that neighbors have seen a man coming and going from her apartment. "Your case is under review," one of the officers says, as the other goes to look in the bathroom. Okwe is gone, hanging from a drainpipe outside the window.
Okwe walks through the neighborhood barefoot and hides out at the cafe, where the owner gives him sneakers. The owner then gives him some more of the herb he gave him earlier, an herb that can help him stay awake. He warns Okwe that the herb is bad for him, but he takes it.
When Okwe goes to the cab station, the other cabbies treat him like a celebrity. He drives someone, but at one point falls asleep at the wheel, and is awakened only by the honking of a car behind him.
Later, Okwe goes to work at the hotel and goes to the store room to find his shoes. At the front desk, he sees Juliette coming down the stairs asking after her date for the evening. She greets Ivan warmly and they go off to sleep together. Suddenly, Okwe hears the two men who showed up at Senay's say, "Immigration enforcement director." They show him their badges and ask what time the maids clock in. Okwe tells him they come in at 5AM, and the men ask if they can wait.
One of the men takes out a hotel matchbook and goes to light his cigarette. Okwe asks him not to smoke in that area and so the men go cross the lobby. The scene shifts to Ivan having sex with Juliette. Okwe calls Ivan and Juliette while they are having sex and asks Ivan to stop Senay from entering the hotel, warning that the immigration officers are there.
The maids begin to enter the hotel, and Okwe gets nervous. Ivan comes back angrily and stops Senay just as she's about to enter the hotel. The immigration officers are disappointed and ask if all the maids have entered. Okwe tells them that that's all of them and the officers leave.
The next day, Okwe and Senay walk through the city and Senay mentions that she has a friend who works at a factory, which Okwe calls a "sweatshop." "Is it worse than cleaning up after whores?" Senay says, resolving to start working at the factory. Okwe says he will leave her apartment, and Senay says she is owed three days of money from the hotel. Okwe tells her he will go and ask Sneaky about her pay, and tells her to meet him at the cafe at 4.
Senay goes to the factory, while Okwe goes to visit Sneaky, where he finds a very ill man in the waiting room, being held by his friend. Sneaky comes in and asks Okwe what he wants, and Okwe tells him he needs Senay's pay. As Juan goes in the other room to collect it, the ill man cries out in pain and Okwe examines him, saying he's a doctor.
Seeing the man's wound, Okwe tells them that he must go to the hospital immediately. Sneaky comes in nonchalantly, as Okwe asserts that the wound is from an operation and asks in which country he got the operation done. "They won't go to hospital," Sneaky says, definitively.
Okwe goes to the crematorium looking for Guo Yi, but he isn't there.
Analysis
In this section, Senay and Okwe begin to connect more, especially over the subject of New York City, which comes up at dinner after Okwe sees a postcard from Senay's cousin in New York. Senay romanticizes the American city, and Okwe agrees that he sometimes wishes that London was more like New York. However, for unknown reasons, Okwe had to come back to London, where he could not practice medicine, a fate which he describes as "an African story." The two immigrants share in the uncertainty of struggling to find the best place to live as a transplant.
As he tries to find out more about the mystery of the human heart, Okwe finds that he is more and more isolated. His friend Guo Yi advises him to not concern himself in shady matters, for fear that it will compromise his immigration status. Ivan the bellhop takes on a threatening tone when Okwe asks him about whether there are any guests at the hotel who stay, but do not leave. Whenever he reaches out for help, his inquisitiveness is met with disapproval, and he is left alone with the knowledge of the heart.
In this section of the film, the suspense begins to build, as Okwe must go searching for answers on his own. The director Stephen Frears signifies this building suspense in many ways. He often shoots Okwe in a tight closeup to show his emotional point of view, like when he hides in the shower in 510. Additionally, the score, by Nathan Larson, creates a suspenseful and ominous atmosphere that involves the audience in the emotional tension of the drama.
Adding even more to the suspense of the plot is the fact that there are two immigration enforcers on the hunt for Senay and Okwe. They have not put together that Okwe is an illegal immigrant, but they question Senay with a menacing attitude, and their meddling forces her to leave her job at the hotel and take a job at a factory with poor conditions. The second-class citizenship of an immigrant—documented or not—creates an even more isolating backdrop for these characters.
Without even looking for more answers, Okwe begins to stumble upon some more information about what is happening at the hotel. When he goes to ask Sneaky for Senay's paycheck on her behalf, he finds a man with a horrible wound from an apparently botched operation. He does not get any answers from Juan in this moment, but it appears to be somehow connected to the human heart he found in the toilet at the hotel.
