The Odyssey Wars (Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, August 7, 2026, New Lines)
In the Hindu Kush highlands where I was born, there is no word for beggar. The itinerant mendicants who walk the valley are called “mustafer,” which is Khowar for “traveler.” If one turns up at your door, you offer them food and shelter. The travelers rarely tax your generosity. The same courtesy is extended to any stranger, regardless of standing. The Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan also have the same tradition. Every Pashtun household with means has a “hujra,” usually a large room where any guest — known or unknown — is offered hospitality. The guests in turn honor the tradition by offering hospitality to others, who may be strangers to them. The tradition is sustained by paying it forward.
Ancient Greeks would recognize this tradition. They called it “xenia.” The word is derived from “xenos,” the Greek word for “stranger.” Hospitality to strangers was understood as both a moral obligation and service to the gods. Zeus and Athena were believed to be protectors of strangers. The tradition obliged the host to provide hospitality and the guest to show courtesy and not to abuse the host’s generosity. The tradition was sustained by the same combination of reciprocity and paying forward.
Such traditions have all but disappeared from the West. There are individual acts of generosity, but nothing that is sustained by a shared code. Indeed, over the past decade, the stranger has become a subject of hostility and derision — and not just for the far right. Before his defenestration, former U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had mined xenophobia for political gain by lamenting Britain’s decline into an “island of strangers.” The word “xenophobia” is derived from the same root as “xenia.”
In adapting Homer’s epic “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan has chosen to use xenia as the moral pivot of the story. Except that Nolan broadens it into what he calls “Zeus’ law,” which he equates to the golden rule: Treat others as you’d have them treat you. In doing so, he makes the principle universal, accessible to more than an exclusive club of classicists, while also making the epic’s final irruption of violence less incomprehensible to a modern audience. Ancient Greek traditions of hospitality may not be familiar to the average cinemagoer, but everyone understands fairness.