The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Jan 24, 2025

 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist first Edition cover 2007

When Mohsin Hamid, the young  British Pakistani writer, began his second novel the demolition of the World Trade Tower by the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States had not yet occurred. He re-wrote the novel again  and again and took seven years to complete it. Ultimately, the novel turned on Changez Khan’s dawning realisation that something had changed fundamentally in the acceptability of Muslims in America after those attacks. The country would no longer be the land of his youthful dreams.

The twin towers attack of Sep 11, 2001 when airliners were flown into the towers by terrorists – the south tower is on fire and the north tower billows smoke

In  between he has a slow-burning love affair with a young woman called Erica. But she has still not come out of her depression following the grief over her boyfriend Chris, who died in the 9/11 attack. Changez loses track of Erica, but continues to think of her fondly, even after returning to Pakistan, holding onto the hope that she might one day come to him. 

When the North Tower collapsed this fire engine was damaged beyond repair — it is now an exhibit at the 9/11 Museum. Among first responders 441 died on that day

What makes Changez give up on his dreams is an eye-opening conversation he has with the head of the literary division of a company (Juan-Bautista), he has been sent to evaluate in Chile by his Wall Street company.  In a conversation he is told of young Christian boys who were captured by the Ottoman Turks in battle and then brainwashed into becoming Janissaries to work for their new masters. The implication is Changez has been similarly indoctrinated by his Wall Street firm to work against his own interests; he has become a hired gun. Juan-Bautista prompts Changez to examine his own identity and his relationship with America, which helps Changez see himself as a kind of "cultural outsider" exploited by American power structures. 

From there a transformation takes place and perhaps the poetry of Pablo Neruda one of whose houses south of Valparaiso he visits, has something to do with his deeper appreciation of his own poetic roots (his father was a poet in the Punjab).

Sumbal Maqsood of Government College University, Lahore, wrote in a paper titled Interrogating the Fundamentals of Identity: Changez’s Defining Act in the Reluctant Fundamentalist about Changez Khan’s dilemma:

“The standardized tests of America (like SAT) were traps to attract the intellectual cream of other nations, leaving the home countries deprived of brain power, while the migrants became servers of a tentacled capitalist cause. Changez realized gradually that he was just enabling the tentacles to grow more out of bounds.” 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist was adapted as a 2012 film in the political thriller drama genre, directed by Mira Nair and starring Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, and Liev Schreiber

The novel was later turned into a film directed by Mira Nair available for viewing free on Youtube. Many scenes are changed: Juan-Bautista in Valparaiso is turned into a book publisher in Istanbul who publishes in translation great authors from the Middle East and Asia. The book becomes more a thriller in the latter half of the film about secret CIA intervention in Lahore to rescue one of their operatives – there is no such story in the novel. In the film Changez Khan is less of a non-violent protester about American interventionism, and more of an activist goading students until he steps unwillingly into the terrorist backdrop to fundamentalism in Pakistan. Readers may on the whole prefer the novel because it leaves things unresolved at the end.

In the film Changez (played by Rizwan Ahmed, the British Pakistani actor) learns that the Istanbul publisher whose company they were evaluating, has published a Turkish translation of his father, Ajmal Khan's, poetry

Full Account and Record of reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid photographed by Muir Vidler for the New Statesman

Bio

Mohsin Hamid was born in Lahore, moved to San Francisco at age three, to Lahore again at nine, to New Jersey at 18, to Lahore a third time at 22, to Boston at 23, New York at 26, London at 30, and Lahore a fourth time at 38. (He has had multi-month stints in Manila and Milan as well.) Because his home keeps changing he has always had problems with borders. When he travels, he feels more like a nomad than a tourist.  He thinks of moving to wherever he is invited for a lecture, be it Istanbul, Tokyo, Paris. Cairo., or Santiago (capital of Chile).

The boundary between the roles of character and reader, he often mixes up, feeling like the character he was reading about. He notes the essential role of the reader as a co-creator of scenes in a novel. “When you read a novel, what you see is black ink on pulped wood, and it is you who projects scenes on to the screen of your imagination.” Rather than spin a story in which everything is laid out as facts in logical sequence following upon each other, he decided it would be more exciting to reveal points of views and facts of different characters and let the reader decide. In that respect it’s like the famous film Rashomon of Kurosawa, which pioneered the Rashomon effect, a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, and contradictory versions of the same incident.

Hamid, now 53, is the author of novels such as The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017). He was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and as a child lived for a time in California. He returned to the US for university and worked for several years in New York City before moving to London, where he lived throughout his thirties. In 2009 he moved with his Pakistani wife back to Lahore, where they are raising their two children, though they return to the US often and spend a summer in Miami.

Here’s how Hamid came to write The Reluctant Fundamentalist: 

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist took me seven years…. I completed the first draft in July 2001, a wistful account of a young Pakistani working in corporate New York who, after a failed love affair, grows a beard and moves back to Lahore. It was terrible, as my first drafts always are. My job is to write a book increasingly less badly over time.

A few weeks later, the terrorist attacks of September 11 happened. My world changed. I wrote the novel again. And again. I wrote it in the first person. I wrote it in the third person. I wrote it as a fable. I wrote it in an American accent. It just refused to work. I looked to Camus for inspiration, and to High Noon. Eventually I arrived at what I hoped was an appropriately catalysing voice, a voice modelled on class-conscious graduates of elite Pakistani schools (set up by the British a century-and-a-half ago), which, in its formal rigidity and potential menace and sense of hailing from the past, chimed stylistically with certain popular stereotypes about Muslims and Islam.

And I also arrived at what I hoped was an appropriately permeable form, a dramatic monologue, a half-conversation spoken to "you" that leaves it to the reader to supply its missing context. So readers end up creating their own versions of what happens in the book, and the book in turn moves and shifts and reflects in response to the individual inclinations and world views of readers.”

Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Mohsin Hamid’s experience of travelling changed dramatically. In 2001 the novelist was 30 and had lived in the West for 18 years. Yet as a brown-skinned Pakistani man with a Muslim name flying between London and New York, he would be questioned by airport staff and searched extensively. He was often taken into a side room for further questioning, which could take hours. “All of this was strange for me,” the novelist said, “because I’d come and gone relatively easily: I had a valid visa and it wasn’t an issue. And now suddenly it was.” Once his plane was detained on the tarmac and he was brought back to the airport for further questioning. He was treated as a potential terrorist. 

Many of the experiences of Changez in the novel are perhaps descriptions of his own treatment in airports by US Immigration. Hamid says: “In a world where the vast majority of people are denied the right to leave their country,” he feels fortunate in that regard. “It’s also something that I think belongs to a previous era. I grew up in a moment when the world appeared to be globalising: people were moving, citizenships were more easily bestowed. My vantage point feels vaguely anachronistic now.” Hamid speaks with an accent that is gently American with a Pakistani lilt, according to the interviewer.

Hamid believes in the power of literature to provoke. His debut novel Moth Smoke (2000) contains drug use and adultery, still taboo in a Muslim country such as Pakistan. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007, is a monologue told by Changez Khan, the charming if loquacious Pakistani man who was educated in the US. Changez says he is a “lover of America”, yet when the 9/11 attacks took place, he smiled at “the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees”. It’s an uncomfortable admission to be confronted with – even coming from a fictional character.

The above bio is a synopsis of views expressed in two interviews with the author in the New Statesman and The Guardian:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2022/08/mohsin-hamid-after-9-11-potential-terrorist

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/14/mohsin-hamid-reluctant-fundamentalist-bookclub

Thomo

 After reading the passage from Chapter 1 Thomo gave a short commentary on the book and the passage.

He thought more about the book than the passage. He enjoyed reading the book, but there were some things he didn't quite like. In spite of Pakistan being undoubtedly the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism (what about the USA?), the author makes no mention of it and most amazingly tries to portray India as the aggressor. (Joe did not note that Hamid vilified India in the novel)

Even when a group of armed men from Pakistan, ISI and Jaish-e-Mohammad sponsored, attacked the Indian parliament, the author instead of feeling revolted about the 9-11 Twin Tower carnage and the loss of several thousand innocent lives, feels some satisfaction that America has been taught a lesson.

This is very different from his reaction after his interview, described in the chosen reading portion, where he notes that the Underwood Samson interviewer stated the job had the potential to transform Changez’s life as surely as it had transformed his.

It would make Changez’s concerns about money and status things of the past, distant memories. How could he go from that optimism to feeling happy about 9-11, asked Thomo?

Joe: This was Thomo's commentary. I suppose he has a point. The main thrust of that first passage where he's being hired is to show that this is a kind of amoral company. It just evaluates firms that clients say they would like evaluated, and say, how good is it commercially. Is it going to be successful? Do they have enough customers? What are their prospects? Will the stock go up or go down? And will their market expand, and so on?

Jim, his boss, comments that Changez is wildly overoptimistic in his estimate of the fictitious company’s worth because very few people would take up the notion of being reduced to atoms and then being re-composed again as humans at the other end. Nevertheless, Jim notes that Changez goes through all the motions of asking the right questions, looking for the data to validate this or that point from past experience and so on, comparing it to the Concorde for New York to London flights, and so forth. Changez has been given good marks for the kind of questions that he asks and the data he looks for to answer the problem analytically.

That's what gets him hired. It doesn't matter that Jim thinks his answer was wrong, but Jim obviously thinks that he's already mastered the process of arriving at an answer by asking the right questions and collecting data. And with further training from Underwood Samson, he'll be a great success, which he becomes, actually, in the firm.

At that point, Changez thinks that America hires on merit, and it's only merit that matters when it comes to American companies. But later he realises that may be true as far as the corporate world goes, but when it comes to politics, he finds that America has its biases. In no part of the world is politics a meritocracy.

America talks about democracy, about social justice, and then what do they go and do?

At the first interview he's being hired as a young boy, and 9-11 hasn't happened. So he is very happy that it's on merit that he's been chosen. He's made it to Princeton on a merit scholarship. So the American dream is there.

The gaps in the American dream are what he comes to know later. And that’s when he changes.

Being a Pakistani writer, he has to be sympathetic to his country, I guess, and on that point Thomo may be right. But Saras wishes Mohsin Hamid could have been a little more neutral and not taken any sides and left it vague.

Joe mentioned regarding 9-11 what Noam Chomsky said: his first comment on 9-11 was "This is the first time the guns have been pointed the other way,” while describing the events themselves as a "horrendous atrocity, probably the most devastating instant human toll of any crime in history outside of war.” 

That was his comment on 9-11. How true it is, because America has up to that point had been turning its guns on half a dozen countries in South America which he names: Nicaragua, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Columbia. Also on many countries in Europe and all around. Afghanistan, Turkey, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

We all know that America  has been intervening at will militarily into all these places, creating wars and destroying lives, everywhere, including the lives of its own soldiers.

Globally many felt in some part, 9-11 happened because of all these things that America was doing to everybody else. That something like this might happen to them also could be expected.

None of us is advocating terrorism. Then Priya made the extreme statement, “When you are for Palestine, you are for Hamas.”

Joe said that’s absolutely not true. If you are for Palestine, it doesn't mean you are for Hamas. You can be for Palestine and not applaud the terror of Hamas. You can be for humanity. When 98% of the countries in the United Nations voted for a Palestinian state (including America), are they saying that they approved of Hamas? They were saying the Palestinians justifiably need a state of their own. Mr Modi too agreed that Palestinians need a state. So does every right-thinking person. They are now living like refugees in their own country. They are without a country they can call their own. It's not fair.

Okay enough said, let's go on to the next reading.

KumKum 

Joe said Kumkum is going topless in this passage – because the title of her passage from Chapter 2 is: Erica goes topless for a swim in the island of Rhodes.

Readers said it ws a nice passage. It just shows how awkward Changez is. He looks gauche when he talks to women. But he seems hooked on topless, as which male would not be. Imagine how awkward that made him feel coming from a country like Pakistan – here women are fully covered up. Urban Pakistan is a liberated place; middle class women do not wear burkas, they were salwar-kameez or saris. Urban Pakistani women do not not even wear head scarfs, said Joe.

"It is remarkable, I must say, how being in Pakistan heightens one’s sensitivity to the sight of a woman’s body”

A reader asked: do you think she went topless because she had some kind of a problem, you know, which is revealed later? No, because everybody on the island is doing that. It's not anything unusual. Another asked: is it common in America that people go topless swimming on beaches?

Yes, in some beaches, said KumKum. Joe said he’s been been very curious very about that, but never yet found it. I have to take him to that beach, said KumKum.

Kavita

Kavita asked: did it strike anybody that her name is Erica, which is which are the five letters ending America. There are a lot of allegories in this novel, which come out only when you read it again.

Kavita took one of Joe's suggested passages. Wainwright, a fellow recruit, seemed very much in his element at the party to celebrate the graduation from training. Jim, the boss of the analysts, calls him later into the office and tells Changez he stood first in class and offered him a project in the Philippines.

Zakia

Her passage from Chapter 4 describes Changez and Erica going for a picnic in Central Park in New York..

She  chose this passage because she thought it was something very sensitive in Erica that she couldn't forget her dead boyfriend. And at the same time, Erica and her new acquaintance, Changez,  were trying to get close. They struggled with that even afterwards. Because even though he tried to build up a relationship with her, she just couldn't overcome the loss of her boyfriend.

Changez and Erica – Picnic in Central Park

The whole description of Central Park was so beautiful:

“It was one of those glorious late-July afternoons in New York when a stiff wind off the Atlantic makes the trees swell and the clouds race across the sky. You know them well? Yes, precisely: the humidity vanishes as the city fills its lungs with cooler, briny air.”

Picnics are a done thing in America. In Bangalore also we used to do picnics, said Zakia. KumKum chimed in telling about the picnics she’d go to in the parks in New Delhi – Nehru Park, Buddha Jayanti Park, and so on.

Central Park – aerial view of the 833 acres – there are five parks in New York City that are larger

With air pollution, fewer people talk about picnics in Mumbai.

During her childhood, Kavita used to stay in Ezhupunna. Every holiday they used to go from Ezhupunna by boat to Bolgatty, to have a picnic there next to the palace, on sandwiches and fruit juice. Another picnic destination was Kambiyanti. Coming back, they used to go to an ice cream parlour called Sub-Zero.

Pamela said she has taken her Delta Study school students to Bolgatty for picnics. The children climbed those trees. One tree was near the water, hanging right over it.

Arundhaty said she has taken her grandchildren Neku and Rishi, and Aditya to that walkway by the water in Bolgatty. The other side now connects to a new bridge. They would take a basket and a sheet to sit on and watch the sunset.

Arundhaty 

Arundhaty chose a passage from Chapter 5 because this is the first instance in the whole story where Changez realises that he is not really part of the American scene. There is something in him which is more Asian than American like his colleagues. He expresses his thoughts about how he is unlike those people who he is trying to imitate. Changez experiences a moment of undisguised hostility towards those who treat him as apart from the mainstream.

That hostility was actually not really the point except that when he turns around he finds that there is an American guy in his company who seems more alien to him than the Philippino driver. 

This takes place just after 9-11. They're still in Manila. The cab driver is staring at the Americans because of what has happened in New York. But he is an Asian who is staring. So actually, Changez  realises his roots are not in America. There's one lovely portion in which he says, you know, that he's running, and he feels like he's running in a race, and he turns behind and he sees that he's being lapped.

And he's being lapped not by the winner of the race, but by somebody who's at the bottom of this pyramid. He'll never be able to catch up with them. He's a very competitive guy right from the first interview for the job. Jim his supervisor says, there’s an instinct for identifying what mattered most in a business case – and not to lose it, not to be ashamed of it. He's intelligent and good at his work.

Arundhaty  liked the way the author has built up this underlying suspense and threat, to the American that he's sitting and talking to. It's a very nice style, that conversation. At the same time, you're still not very sure. He leaves everything …mysterious. Therefore it depends on how you read the book to decide whether something has happened to him, or whether he's really come to …grief

He's describing the person's expressions without saying a single dialogue. He's got something – the visitor. He's got a gun, but the novelist doesn't say so. He says there's a bulge in his suit, under his arm.

Saras said this kind of narration of a story is called a dramatic monologue. Which is usually used in plays. You only hear one person's point of view. Or rather, the whole thing is directed by one person. And the other person doesn't say anything at all.

The other person's point of view is only what this man reports. He's speaking for both the people.

In some places, the American is like  somebody who doesn't have an opinion, or like a dummy. Because the author is actually bringing in the fellow and narrating his piece. He is brought in to show the feelings of antagonism that his people, Pakistanis or Asians, are feeling towards America.

After he returns to Pakistan, Changez becomes a mentor for students in the academic institution he works at. One of his students is put in jail. And he's told to be careful, he’s under the radar. So, whether this American guy is from the CIA and is coming to assassinate Changez is up in the air.

We are getting ahead of the story, said Joe.

Devika

Devika could not attend in person as she was flooded with guests till about 7.30 and therefore sent in a voice file. Devika’s bit is also taken from Chapter 5 and is also quite interesting. Changez is coming back from Manila for the first time... He experiences ‘profiling.’ He's pulled aside at the airport and he's asked, why have you come back? What's the purpose of your trip? And then you recall the Hindi film, My Name is Khan.

Devika said similar things have happened to a very close friend who's a doctor.

Now, Devika took this passage because she has never visited America, but from what she heard, taking people out of the queue and questioning them happens very frequently, and only in the United States of America.

There's some trigger, maybe the name is similar to that of a suspected terrorist. Achu, her husband, has visited America numerous times in the last 40 years on work, but more recently, the last maybe 15 years or so, he has been pulled out of the line and questioned. Every time they say it's just a random check, but he gets pulled out every time. So there's obviously something in his name that probably triggers an alarm for them.

This doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. There was a connection therefore when Devika read this passage and when thought Achu reporting his American Immigration experience on returning.

Kavita mentioned that Anjan, her Ramesh uncle's son, went back to America. His Surname is Tarakhan, which has a ‘Khan’ in it. So they thought he was a Muslim. And my God, this boy was really, given a difficult time. He had to call people and say he's not a Muslim.  Only then they let him go. Imagine. He was a student there and they were not allowing him in. It was very difficult after 9-11. 

Saras said the same thing happened to a friend of hers. He was training in the U.S. at that time. A neurologist, he was at Mayo Clinic. He was in the U.S. during 9-11. So he came back to India for some time after that. And when they met him, Rajendran, her husband, just very casually told him he should grow a beard for it would look very nice on him.

He was a good-looking guy.  But Saras put a stop, that's enough. When they see his name, they will pull him aside. If grows a beard, that will be the end. They're so paranoid because you remember after 9-11, in 2012, I think one of my trips to America, how they harassed her.

She felt sad for the Arabs, how they make them remove everything. You know, it's really disgusting. And a total indignity.

Priya told of her experience because she very stupidly told the US Immigration that she’s a journalist and was in America for work. She was taken straight to the detention center. She had to wait there three hours. They sit on a dais, like judges, and question you. Why are you here? Purpose of your visit. The purpose was the city of Philadelphia had invited her. Why does Philadelphia need you, they asked? Priya replied she didn’t know why, you’d have to ask them, because they've invited me. It went on like this for 45 minutes.

Exactly as in this passage Devika read, there was a man, a handcuffed guy sitting next to  Priya. It's very unnerving.

Another US story by Pamela. She had gone for just an ordinary vaccination and they were questioning her. Her name was Christian, but they wanted to check whether the previous generation was also Christian. They asked her mother's name. Fortunately, it was Mrs. George. Then they asked her what is your mother-in-law's name? They wanted to check whether Pamela had changed her name.

Joe said he had a dog put on him once when he was passing through New York, JFK Airport. A long time back. He was there  like an ordinary guy who was retuning to his US university. And they brought the dog and were sniffing him for drugs.

Once when Joe went to the UK the immigration lady put him through the wringer, asked what do you do and so on. They asked him: what do you do for work? Joe replied: I think. You mean they actually pay you to think? Yes, said Joe, that’s what scientists do for a living.

Saras said Dr Rajendran, her husband when he went to the US for the fist time. He was studying in Vienna and he went from there to UK. And they asked him a whole lot of questions. So, then he said, why did you ask all these questions? The interrogator said: can you see what this badge says here? “Customs Inspector.” I'm paid to ask you these questions.

Saras 

Saras read from Chapter 7. Changez is in denial about Pakistani cab drivers been beaten up in New York after 9/11. Later, when he sees TV news of the USA invading Afghanistan, Pakistan’s neighbour, he trembles with fury.

As Arundhaty noted, it's the start of Changez’s confusion about his identity. He's very confused about what is happening, and about his real identity. 

Till the bombing of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s neighbour, Changez has been denying that there is anything going wrong. He feels he's protected by his position and the money that he's earning in America. The book itself, as the story unfolds, explains why Changez was not unhappy about 9-11.

It's not that he wanted to feel happy about it, but at the same time, he felt that there was something dreadfully wrong about what America was doing as revenge. In this he was in accord with a very common sentiment among a majority of Muslims worldwide.

And not just Muslims. Many other countries that had been savaged by the USA. like Vietnam, felt no great sympathy for America. They just choose somebody to go after, and America could not care less if it was the wrong Muslim nation from the country (Saudi Arabia) whose citizens formed 18 out of the 19 who flew the planes into the World Trade Towers. First it was Iraq, on a pretext about weapons of mass destruction, then it was Afghanistan for not surrendering Osama bin Laden at the behest of America – no proof being offered that OBL was the mastermind. The fact that he publicly praised the attack on the twin towers was proof enough according to the Americans.

Geetha

Geetha chose a passage from Chapter 9 where Changez returns to his home in Pakistan to find a lot has changed.

Changez is reacclimatising with his country. He has changed. With his American veneer he saw his home as a a bit  shabby. But he appreciates the grandeur of his family house, its Mughal miniatures and ancient carpets that graced its reception rooms, and the excellent library. He feels proud once again to be a Pakistani.

Geetha liked his writing here as well: My brother had come to collect me from the airport;

“My brother embraced me with sufficient force to cause my rib cage to flex. As he drove he ruffled my hair with his hand. I felt suddenly very young—or perhaps I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth. … My mother twirled a hundred-rupee note around my head to bless my return; later it would be given to charity.”

Other readers too enjoyed his writing. Changez recalls that America was still being born when in Lahore they had grand structures like the Lahore Fort, the Shalimar Gardens, and the Badshahi Mosque.

Lahore Fort was originally built by the Moghuls (Akbar in 1566, with syncretic features melding Hindu and Persian architecture), but Maharaja Ranjit Singh added many buildings to the fort during his reign

Shalimar Gardens in Lahore was built as a private pleasure garden by the Moghuls in 1643

Badshahi Mosque was built beside the Lahore Fort by Aurangzeb in 1670 and is one of the largest mosques in the world

Zakia mentioned that a part of their family had also migrated to Pakistan at the time of partition and they had beautiful homes, and lived very comfortable, luxurious lives. But unfortunately,  Pakistan had economic problems, and fundamentalism that went from bad to worse. All the children had to go abroad to get their education. Everyone is now in UK or US.

Lahore was a Mughal capital before they moved to Delhi. Now it's not even a nice feeling to be a Pakistani when you travel abroad – but Pakistanis will differ.

Readers  loved the last bit and the little traditions surrounding the greeting or a returning son and the way the mother blessed her son They do not want to think of war and so on. They're happy to see their son back.

Joe

Joe read next from chapter 10. This is the passage where Changez quits his firm mid-assignment in Valparaiso after a conversation with Juan-Buatista.

His decision to quit the firm of Underwood Samson is precipitous. He's gone on a deputation to Peru. He's, of course, examining a firm for suitability for acquisition by another company. He's in conversation with a guy called Juan-Bautista, the chief of the publishing division of the firm that another company is going to acquire. 

The novel is about the arc of of the life of a Pakistani lad who made good in the United States, getting a high-class education on a scholarship and following it up with a career in a Wall Street firm. It is one of those secretive firms that work as an investigative arm for the deal-makers of the financial world to assess the financial health and prospects of companies their clients may be interested to invest in or even acquire. 

With a professional analytic method based on collecting a whole lot of data, Underwood Samson & Co assess and determine the fates of companies, without regard to human factors, based solely on the relevant company data. Changez has become a master of the method. 

Now he is having qualms, motivated by conversations with a man who introduced him to Pablo Neruda and invited him to view one of the poet’s houses south of Valparaiso. Changez knows his financial investigation will probably lead to disruption in the life of Juan-Bautista who heads the less profitable literary division of the publishing company. The story of the janissaries that JB tells him strikes home: is Changez too in the modern age a hired gun, chosen to kill companies with his non-violent financial modelling tools?

His impulsive decision to resign is not out of sympathy for JB, but a realisation dawning on him that he is not living his own life. Appeals to his loyalty by his boss Jim are rejected.

This is the turning point in the book where he becomes a reluctant fundamentalist. Reluctant, yes, yes. The story of the Janissaries, young Christians whose loyalties were turned to battle for the Ottomans, strikes home. Pablo Neruda's romanticism also comes in to give pause to the western brainwashed thinking of Changez up to this point.

Then he realises that the job with the American firm is basically a mercenary job. This passage is a turning point in the book. Right through the book, he is not a religious person at all. But now religion is colouring his viewpoint.

Osama Bin Laden had no Western education. He was from beginning to end, a conservative Saudi Arabian.

Somebody asked if this book was a biography of sorts of the author Mohsin Hamid.  Here is the answer of ChatGPT to this query:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is not a biography, but it does contain autobiographical elements. The novel is a work of fiction, but its protagonist, Changez, shares some similarities with Hamid’s own life. Both Hamid and Changez were born in Pakistan, attended Princeton University, and worked in corporate America before becoming disillusioned with Western ideals.

However, the novel is not a direct retelling of Hamid's experiences. Instead, it is a literary exploration of identity, post-9/11 tensions, and the complexities of cultural belonging. Hamid has mentioned in interviews that while he drew from his own background, the story is ultimately a fictional one. The novel is structured as a dramatic monologue, with Changez recounting his life story to an unnamed American in Lahore, which adds to its reflective and ambiguous nature.

The author, Mohsin Hamid, divides his time between the UK, the USA and Pakistan and is not a fundamentalist.

An astute reader observed that there is talk in the firm of Underwood Samson about fundamentals: for Underwood Samson the fundamentals are amoral: profit.

Mention was made of business fundamentalism  – now what is that? To make money? Human feeling need not intervene in the business of making money. Is Changez reacting to that?

If he's reacting to that fundamentalism, then you can understand why he's labelling himself  ‘a reluctant fundamentalist.’ Essentially he realises he's become a tool of Wall Street, and wants to regain his own life.

But this resignation while he is on deputation to a project abroad is likely an impulsive decision, and one can understand his boss’ consternation and his parents’ being heartbroken. Here is their son doing a fantastic job and succeeding abroad. The American dream is coming true for them too. They've got all kinds of plans: he will prosper, he'll have a nice family, they'll have a base in the US.

Suddenly he decides to quit his job and go back home. That is the crux of this passage. Priya said  what is beautiful about this, is involving a visit to the poet’s house into the decision.

La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda’s house in Valparaiso, the ultimate city home – peaceful and aloof, but boasting a view of Valparaíso

Neruda's bedroom with a view in his home in Valparaiso called Sebastiana, after its builder Sebastian Collado

Joe said Pablo Neruda had three houses in Chile. He's talking about one which is close to Valparaiso, but he had two other houses also.

The final resting place of Pablo Neruda and Matilde Urrutia in front of his Isla Negra home, about 80 km south of Valparaiso

Priya.

Priya chose a passage from Ch 11 where Changez returns with a beard to New York and is subjected to verbal abuse by complete strangers. He discovers that the mere fact of growing a beard changes his identity in the eyes of ordinary people around him; to the point of being subjected to verbal abuse in the changed circumstances of 9/11.

So the beard kept by pious Muslims has become closely associated with their identity. And even the mother, when Changez is going back to the US says: why don't you just shave off your beard? Because she's afraid that they will identify him on that ground and harass him. That was a difficulty for Muslims in the world after 9-11. Even carrying a Muslim name became a cause for instant suspicion if you were entering America – Immigration would question and harass the entrant.

Pamela

Pamela went next with a passage from Ch 12  where Changez analyses America’s reaction to 9/11.

Pamela thanked the few who were left. Since we had discussed so much already Pamela went straight to her reading. She thought this was a beautiful passage, because he refers to his own story and picks up instances from here and there, which sum up his whole experience. He asks himself: what did you do to stop America?

Did he do anything? That's what Pamela was also wondering. Changez returns to Pakistan as teaching faculty and he mentors students. That is what he is doing to stop an America gone mad.

Probably the message is we need to educate the next generation. He is teaching them how duplicitous American policies could be. One of his students gets arrested, and he himself is under observation. The students value his contribution as a professor, and that prestige protects him from being thrown into jail as well.

Shoba

Shoba’s reading is taken from the ending of the final chapter 12 in which Changez defends a boy who has disappeared into an American detention centre; he himself now feels pursued.

The novel doesn't really tell us what happened at the end, but leaves readers in a bit of a suspense. It's up to them to think of what could have been. Whether he realised who this stranger was, a CIA agent perhaps, as he suspected all along. There is a hint of it.

Old Anarkali market in Lahore where some of the action takes place

The boy was a young student who was, in Shoba’s view, speaking against America, or maybe he got into trouble, and then he was whisked away somewhere, and is not to be seen anywhere since.

The story is left hanging at this point:

“I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal.” 

In the interview Changez forcefully argues that just as all Pakistanis cannot be branded terrorists, all Americans are not undercover assassins or kidnappers sending suspects without proof to back detentions sites, where they will disappear without trace.

Changez is full of premonition, because you have to remember that hundreds of people were detained illegally and snatched by American agents from all over the world and detained without trial, and even without being charged of any crime ever. Guantanamo Bay (‘Gitmo’) is symbolic of that dark chapter in the American history of overreach. Now Mr Trump wants to detain 30,000 illegal immigrants there.

How many were detained at the Gitmo detention site after 9/11? How many were actually charged? How many were tried? How many were let go without trial after years? How many are left?

680 prisoners were kept in shackles at Gitmo after America’s ‘war on terror.’ The U.S. Department of Justice claimed that habeas corpus – a legal recourse against unlawful detention – did not apply to Guantanamo Bay because it was outside of U.S. territory. 

As an aside The Modi Govt used a similar falsehood to detain thousands of Indian citizens of J&K who were sent to jail in other States, far from families, without trial or being charged. A Hindu newspaper report states that at least 4,000 people were arrested and held under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without charge, or trial, upon the revocation of Kashmir’s special status on 5 August 2019 which occasioned the mass arrests. Hundreds of Kilometres From Home, Kashmiri Prisoners languish In Uttar Pradesh & Haryana Awaiting Trial With No Access To Families.

The American justice system is wonky: so long as you are not on the mainland America, but in a separate place which is under the jurisdiction of America, but not America, then the laws of America do not hold. You can hold a person indefinitely in detention, without trial, without even charging them of anything. There are still scores of 9/11 detainees imprisoned in Gitmo, 24 years later. And they are being let go one by one, again, without charging them with anything. So this is the extent of illegality in so-called democratic America, where officials always talk about “the rule of law” and all that lofty rhetoric.

Priya offered a point of view defending America’s actions post 9/11. She argued that if a colossal breach of security like 9/11 could be done, there must have been a vast network of plotting terrorists. The planning may have started 10 years before. For security's sake, you can't let anyone go.

But they illegally kidnapped and detained hundreds of people from all over the world, said Joe. And of the 20 or so people who were actually flying those aircraft, 18 were from Saudi Arabia.

The US did not stop a single Saudi. They let all of them go. On a day when all of the traffic in the US skies was stopped, they allowed Saudi aircraft to go and pick up Saudis from all over USA and fly them abroad. 

Ah, said Priya, “they're close partners and best friends of the Saudis. So why will they detain people of an allied country?” Because they were the ones involved, said Joe. Instead America went on to capture and imprison people from all over the world because they were under attack. How silly and how criminal of America! This was illegality to the power N, said Joe.

The argument continued with Priya trotting out all sorts of excuses for America’s Guantanamo imprisonment saying Russia kills people by poisoning, so USA can detain 480 people indefinitely for 24 years without charging or trial; it is justified because you cannot take any risk with the security of a nation. She contrasted with India whose insufficient safety precautions led to the 2008 Mumbai attacks that led to the killing of 175 people when 10 members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamist militant organisation, carried out 12 shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days.

Priya said the wheels of justice take time. But the Gitmo prisoners never got justice, said Joe, no justice at all after 24 years. Even now after 24 years 15 prisoners are being held without trial, without charge, and shamefacedly the American authorities are letting them go, one at a time into whichever country they can arrange to take them for a monetary inducement.

Priya made wild comparisons with the Jews under Nazi Germany, as though what happened in the 1940s concentration camps was justification for what the USA did to the Gitmo prisoners in 2001! A very left-handed compliment to compare America with the Nazis!

America got a taste of their own medicine for the first time when those twin towers were hit, said Saras. People in the global south you spoke to at that point said, oh it's very sad all these people died, but you know, America deserved it. 

Readings from The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Thomo Ch 1 The Job Interview in which Changez is asked to estimate the value of a fictitious company that instantly transports people as in the Start Trek transporter

All right, Changez, let’s test you … things of the distant past

“All right, Changez, let’s test you out. I’m going to give you a business case, a company I want you to value. You can ask me anything you need to know—think Twenty Questions—and you can do your calculations with that pencil and paper. Ready?” I said that I was, and he continued:“I’m going to throw you a curve ball. You’re going to need to get creative here. The company is simple. It has only one service line: instantaneous travel. You step into its terminal in New York, and you immediately reappear in its terminal in London. Like a transporter on Star Trek. Get it? Good. Let’s go.” 

I would like to think that I was, in that moment, outwardly calm, but inside I was panicking. How does one value a fictitious, fantastic company such as the one he had just described? Where does one even begin? I had no idea. I looked at Jim, but he did not seem to be joking. So I inhaled and shut my eyes. There was a mental state I used to attain when I was playing soccer: my self would disappear, and I would be free, free of doubts and limits, free to focus on nothing but the game. When I entered this state I felt unstoppable. Sufi mystics and Zen masters would, I suspect, understand the feeling. Possibly, ancient warriors did something similar before they went into battle, ritualistically accepting their impending death so they could function unencumbered by fear. 

I entered this state in the interview. My essence was focused on finding my way through the case. I started by asking questions to understand the technology: how scalable it was, how reliable, how safe. Then I asked Jim about the environment: if there were any direct competitors, what the regulators might do, if any suppliers were particularly critical. Then I went into the cost side to figure out what expenses we would have to cover. And last I looked at revenues, using the Concorde for comparison, as an example of the price premium and demand one gets for cutting travel time in half, and then estimating how much more one would get for cutting it to zero. Once I had done all that, I projected profits out into the future and discounted them to net present value. And in the end, I arrived at a number. 

“Two point three billion dollars,” I said. Jim was silent for a while. Then he shook his head. “Wildly overoptimistic,” he said. “Your assumptions on customers adopting this thing are way too high. Would you be willing to step into a machine, be dematerialized, and then recomposed thousands of miles away? This is exactly the kind of hyped-up bullshit our clients pay Underwood Samson to see through.” I hung my head. “But,” Jim continued, “your approach was right on. You have what it takes. All you need is training and experience.” He extended his hand. “You’ve got an offer. We’ll give you one week to decide.” 

At first I did not believe him. I asked if he was serious, if there was not a second round for me to pass. “We’re a small firm,” he said. “We don’t waste time. Besides, I’m in charge of analyst recruiting. I don’t need another opinion.” I noticed his hand was still hanging in the air between us, and—fearful it might be withdrawn—I reached out and shook it. His grip was firm and seemed to communicate to me, in that moment, that Underwood Samson had the potential to transform my life as surely as it had transformed his, making my concerns about money and status things of the distant past. (610 words)

KumKum Ch 2 Erica goes topless for a swim in the island of Rhodes

We were lying on the beach … I really like that. It’s unusual.”

We were lying on the beach, and many of the European women nearby were, as usual, sunbathing topless—a practice I wholeheartedly supported, but which the women among us Princetonians, unfortunately, had thus far failed to embrace—when I noticed Erica was untying the straps of her bikini. And then, as I watched, only an arm’s length away, she bared her breasts to the sun. 

A moment later—no, you are right: I am being dishonest; it was more than a moment—she turned her head to the side and saw me staring at her. A number of possible alternatives presented themselves: I could suddenly avert my eyes, thereby proving not only that I had been staring but that I was uncomfortable with her nudity; I could, after a brief pause, casually move my gaze away, as though the sight of her breasts had been the most natural thing in the world; I could keep staring, honestly communicating in this way my admiration for what she had revealed; or I could, through well-timed literary allusion, draw her attention to the fact that there was a passage in Mr. Palomar that captured perfectly my dilemma.

But I did none of these things. Instead, I blushed and said, “Hello.” She smiled—with uncharacteristic shyness, it seemed to me—and replied, “Hi.” I nodded, tried to think of something else to say, failed, and said, “Hello,” again. As soon as I had done this, I wanted to disappear; I knew I sounded unbelievably foolish. She started to laugh, her small breasts bouncing, and said, “I’m going for a swim.” But then, as she walked away, she half-turned and added, “You want to come?” 

I followed her, watching the muscles of her lower back tense delicately to stabilize her spine. We reached the water; it was warm and perfectly clear, round pebbles and the flash of little fish visible below the surface. We slipped inside, she swam out into the bay with powerful strokes, and then she trod water until I had caught up with her. For a time we were both silent and I felt our slippery legs graze each other as we churned the sea. “I don’t think,” she said finally, “I’ve ever met someone our age as polite as you.” “Polite?” I said, less than radiant with joy. She smiled. “I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “Not boring polite. Respectful polite. You give people their space. I really like that. It’s unusual.” (406 words)

Kavita Ch 3 Changez comes out first in class

Wainwright seemed very much in his element: he took one of the associates by the arm and soon they were twirling to the beat of the music. The rest of us watched from the sidelines, cocktails in hand. 

After a while, I stepped outside the pavilion for some air. The sun had set, and I could see the lights of other houses twinkling in the distance along the curve of the shore. The waves were whispering as they came in, causing me to recall being in Greece not long ago. The sea had always seemed far away to me, luxurious and full of adventure; now it was becoming almost a regular part of my life. How much had changed in the four years since I had left Lahore! 

“I remember my first Underwood Samson summer party,” a voice said behind me. I turned; it was Jim. He continued, “It was a gorgeous evening, like this one. Barbecue going, music playing. Reminded me of Princeton for some reason, of how I felt when I got there. I figured, I wouldn’t mind having a place out in the Hamptons myself one day.” I smiled; Jim made one feel he could hear one’s thoughts. “I know what you mean,” I said. Jim let his gaze wander out over the water, and for a time we stood together in silence. Then he said, “You hungry?” “Yes,” I replied. “Good,” he said approvingly, and with that he tapped me on either shoulder with the blade of his hand—an odd, deliberate gesture—and led me back inside. 

I found myself wishing during the course of the evening that Erica were there. You wondered what had become of her? No, I had not forgotten; she was very much a part of my life in New York, and I shall return to her shortly. For the moment, though, I wanted only to mention in passing that Jim’s house was so splendid, I thought even she might be impressed. And that, as you will come to understand, is saying a great deal. 

A week later, when the analyst training program came to an end, Jim called us one by one to his office. “So,” he asked me, “how do you think you did?” “Fairly well,” I replied. He laughed. “You did better than fairly well,” he said. “You’re number one in your class. Your instructors say you’ve got a bit of the warrior in you. Don’t be ashamed of that. Nurture it. It can take you a long way.” I was enormously pleased, but I did not know what to say. “I’ve got a project coming up,” Jim went on. “Music business. Philippines. Want to be on it?” “I certainly do,” I said. “Thank you.” 

When I left Jim’s office, I found Wainwright waiting for me. “I came second this time,” he said, smiling. “I figured you’d be first. And by the way you’re glowing, I can see I was right.” “I got lucky,” I replied. “Not that lucky,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You’ve got to buy me a drink.” (514 words)

Zakia Ch 4 Changez and Erica go for a picnic

My patience was rewarded the weekend before I left for Manila, when Erica asked me to join her for a picnic lunch in Central Park and I discovered that we were not to be met by anyone else. It was one of those glorious late-July afternoons in New York when a stiff wind off the Atlantic makes the trees swell and the clouds race across the sky. You know them well? Yes, precisely: the humidity vanishes as the city fills its lungs with cooler, briny air. Erica wore a straw hat and carried a wicker basket containing wine, fresh-baked bread, sliced meats, several different cheeses, and grapes—a delicious and, to my mind, rather sophisticated assortment.

We chatted as we ate, lounging in the grass. “Do people have picnics in Lahore?” she asked me. “Not so much in the summer,” I told her. “At least not if they have any choice in the matter. The sun is too strong, and the only people one sees sitting outside are clustered in the shade.” “So this must seem very foreign to you, then,” she said. “No,” I replied, “in fact it reminds me of when my family would go up to Nathia Galli, in the foothills of the Himalayas. There we often used to take our meals in the open—with tea and cucumber sandwiches from the hotel.” She smiled at the image, then became thoughtful and fell silent. 

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” she told me when she spoke again. “Chris and I used to come to the park a lot. We’d bring this basket with us and just read or hang out for hours.” “Was it when he died,” I asked, “that you stopped coming?” “I stopped,” she answered, plucking a daisy, “a bunch of things. For a while I stopped talking to people. I stopped eating. I had to go to the hospital. They told me not to think about it so much and put me on medication. My mom had to take three months off work because I couldn’t be by myself. We kept it quiet, though, and by September I was back at Princeton.” 

That was all she said, and she said it in a normal, if quiet, voice. But I glimpsed again—even more clearly than before—the crack inside her; it evoked in me an almost familial tenderness. When we got up to depart, I offered her my arm and she smiled as she accepted it. Then the two of us walked off, leaving Central Park behind. I remember vividly the feeling of her skin, cool and smooth, on mine. We had never before remained in contact for such a prolonged period; the sensation that her body was so strong and yet belonged to someone so wounded lingered with me until long afterwards. (467 words)

Arundhaty – Ch 5 Changez experiences a moment of undisguised hostility toward him 

Yet there were moments when I became disoriented. I remember one such occasion in particular. I was riding with my colleagues in a limousine. We were mired in traffic, unable to move, and I glanced out the window to see, only a few feet away, the driver of a jeepney returning my gaze. There was an undisguised hostility in his expression; I had no idea why. We had not met before—of that I was virtually certain—and in a few minutes we would probably never see one another again. But his dislike was so obvious, so intimate, that it got under my skin. I stared back at him, getting angry myself—you will have noticed in your time here that glaring is something we men of Lahore take seriously—and I maintained eye contact until he was obliged by the movement of the car in front to return his attention to the road. Afterwards, I tried to understand why he acted as he did. Perhaps, I thought, his wife has just left him; perhaps he resents me for the privileges implied by my suit and expensive car; perhaps he simply does not like Americans. I remained preoccupied with this matter far longer than I should have, pursuing several possibilities that all assumed—as their unconscious starting point—that he and I shared a sort of Third World sensibility. Then one of my colleagues asked me a question, and when I turned to answer him, something rather strange took place. I looked at him—at his fair hair and light eyes and, most of all, his oblivious immersion in the minutiae of our work—and thought, you are so foreign. I felt in that moment much closer to the Filipino driver than to him; I felt I was play-acting when in reality I ought to be making my way home, like the people on the street outside.  

I did not say anything, of course, but I was sufficiently unsettled by this peculiar series of events—or impressions, really, for they hardly constituted events—that I found it difficult to sleep that night. Fortunately, however, the intensity of our assignment did not permit me to indulge in further bouts of insomnia; the next day I was at the office until two in the morning, and when I returned to my hotel room, I slept like a baby.

Devika – Ch 5 On the flight back from an assignment in Manila, Changez finds Immigration has become more suspicious 

We were unable to leave Manila for several days, on account of flights being canceled. At the airport, I was escorted by armed guards into a room where I was made to strip down to my boxer shorts—I had, rather embarrassingly, chosen to wear a pink pair patterned with teddy bears, but their revelation had no impact on the severe expressions of my inspectors—and I was, as a consequence, the last person to board our aircraft. My entrance elicited looks of concern from many of my fellow passengers. I flew to New York uncomfortable in my own face: I was aware of being under suspicion; I felt guilty; I tried therefore to be as nonchalant as possible; this naturally led to my becoming stiff and self-conscious. Jim, who was sitting next to me, asked on multiple occasions if I was all right.  

When we arrived, I was separated from my team at immigration. They joined the queue for American citizens; I joined the one for foreigners. The officer who inspected my passport was a solidly built woman with a pistol at her hip and a mastery of English inferior to mine; I attempted to disarm her with a smile. “What is the purpose of your trip to the United States?” she asked me. “I live here,” I replied. “That is not what I asked you, sir,” she said. “What is the purpose of your trip to the United States?” Our exchange continued in much this fashion for several minutes. In the end I was dispatched for a secondary inspection in a room where I sat on a metal bench next to a tattooed man in handcuffs. My team did not wait for me; by the time I entered the customs hall they had already collected their suitcases and left. As a consequence, I rode to Manhattan that evening very much alone.

Saras – Ch 7 Changez is in denial about Pakistani cab drivers been beaten up in New York after 9/11. Later when he sees TV news of US invading Afghanistan, Pakistan’s neighbour, he trembles with fury.

I wonder now, sir, whether I believed at all in the firmness of the foundations of the new life I was attempting to construct for myself in New York. Certainly I wanted to believe; at least I wanted not to disbelieve with such an intensity that I prevented myself as much as was possible from making the obvious connection between the crumbling of the world around me and the impending destruction of my personal American dream. The power of my blinders shocks me, looking back—so stark in retrospect were the portents of coming disaster in the news, on the streets, and in the state of the woman with whom I had become enamored.  

America was gripped by a growing and self-righteous rage in those weeks of September and October as I cavorted about with Erica; the mighty host I had expected of your country was duly raised and dispatched—but homeward, towards my family in Pakistan. When I spoke to them on the telephone, my mother was frightened, my brother was angry, and my father was stoical—this would all pass, he said. I found reassurance in my father’s views, and I dressed myself in them as though they were my own. “Are you worried, man?” Wain-wright asked me one day in the Underwood Samson cafeteria, resting his hand on my shoulder in a gesture of concern as I filled a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese. No, I explained, Pakistan had pledged its support to the United States, the Taliban’s threats of retaliation were meaningless, my family would be just fine.  

I ignored as best I could the rumors I overheard at the Pak-Punjab Deli: Pakistani cabdrivers were being beaten to within an inch of their lives; the FBI was raiding mosques, shops, and even people’s houses; Muslim men were disappearing, perhaps into shadowy detention centers for questioning or worse. I reasoned that these stories were mostly untrue; the few with some basis in fact were almost certainly being exaggerated; and besides, those rare cases of abuse that regrettably did transpire were unlikely ever to affect me because such things invariably happened, in America as in all countries, to the hapless poor, not to Princeton graduates earning eighty thousand dollars a year.  Thus clad in my armor of denial I was able to focus—with continuing and noteworthy success—on my job. 

… 

But then, in the latter part of October, something happened that upset my equanimity. It was shortly after Erica and I had abortively attempted to make love— perhaps a day or two later, although I can no longer precisely recall. The bombing of Afghanistan had already been under way for a fortnight, and I had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twentyfirst- century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming—in a bar, say, or at the entrance to the cable company’s offices—I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so that the machines were cast as heroes.  

What left me shaken, however, occurred when I turned on the television myself. I had reached home from New Jersey after midnight and was flipping through the channels, looking for a soothing sitcom, when I chanced upon a newscast with ghostly night-vision images of American troops dropping into Afghanistan for what was described as a daring raid on a Taliban command post. My reaction caught me by surprise; Afghanistan was Pakistan’s neighbor, our friend, and a fellow Muslim nation besides, and the sight of what I took to be the beginning of its invasion by your countrymen caused me to tremble with fury. I had to sit down to calm myself, and I remember polishing off a third of a bottle of whiskey before I was able to fall asleep. (655 words)

Geetha Ch 9 – Changez returns to his home in Pakistan and find a lot has changed

I recall the Americanness of my own gaze when I returned to Lahore that winter when war was in the offing. I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared, with cracks running through its ceilings and dry bubbles of paint flaking off where dampness had entered its walls. The electricity had gone that afternoon, giving the place a gloomy air, but even in the dim light of the hissing gas heaters our furniture appeared dated and in urgent need of reupholstery and repair. I was saddened to find it in such a state—no, more than saddened, I was shamed. This was where I came from, this was my provenance, and it smacked of lowliness. But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed; I was looking about me with the eyes of a foreigner, and not just any foreigner, but that particular type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so annoyed me when I encountered him in the classrooms and workplaces of your country’s elite. This realization angered me; staring at my reflection in the speckled glass of my bathroom mirror I resolved to exorcize the unwelcome sensibility by which I had become possessed. 

It was only after so doing that I saw my house properly again, appreciating its enduring grandeur, its unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm. Mughal miniatures and ancient carpets graced its reception rooms; an excellent library abutted its veranda. It was far from impoverished; indeed, it was rich with history. I wondered how I could ever have been so ungenerous—and so blind—to have thought otherwise, and I was disturbed by what this implied about myself: that I was a man lacking in substance and hence easily influenced by even a short sojourn in the company of others. 

But far more significant than these inward-oriented musings of mine was the external reality of the threat facing my home. My brother had come to collect me from the airport; he embraced me with sufficient force to cause my rib cage to flex. As he drove he ruffled my hair with his hand. I felt suddenly very young—or perhaps I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middleage that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth. It had been some time since I had been touched so easily, so familiarly, and I smiled. “How are things?” I asked him. He shrugged. “There is an artillery battery dug in at the country house of a friend of mine, half an hour from here, and a colonel billeted in his spare bedroom,” he replied, “so things are not good.” 

My parents seemed well; they were more frail than when I had seen them last, but at their age that was to be expected with the passage of a year. My mother twirled a hundred-rupee note around my head to bless my return; later it would be given to charity. My father’s eyes glistened, moist and brown. “Contact lenses,” he said, dabbing them with a handkerchief, “quite smart, eh?” I said they suited him, and they did; his glasses had come late in life, and they had concealed the strength of his face. Neither he nor my mother wanted to discuss the possibility of war; they insisted on feeding me and hearing in detail about my life in New York and my progress at my new job. It was odd to speak of that world here, as it would be odd to sing in a mosque; what is natural in one place can seem unnatural in another, and some concepts travel rather poorly, if at all. (633 words)

Joe Ch 10 Changez quits his firm mid-assignment in Valparaiso after a conversation with Juan-Buatista

“Does it trouble you,” he inquired, “to make your living by disrupting the lives of others?” “We just value,” I replied. “We do not decide whether to buy or to sell, or indeed what happens to a company after we have valued it.” He nodded; he lit a cigarette and took a sip from his glass of wine. Then he asked, “Have you heard of the janissaries?” “No,” I said. “They were Christian boys,” he explained, “captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, at that time the greatest army in the world. They were ferocious and utterly loyal: they had fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to turn to.”

He tipped the ash of his cigarette onto a plate. “How old were you when you went to America?” he asked. “I went for college,” I said. “I was eighteen.” “Ah, much older,” he said. “The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget.” He smiled and speculated no further on the subject. Our food arrived shortly thereafter and the sea bass may well have been as splendid as he had claimed; unfortunately, I can no longer recall its taste. 

But your expression, sir, tells me that you think something is amiss. Did this conversation really happen, you ask? For that matter, did this so-called JuanBautista even exist? I assure you, sir: you can trust me. I am not in the habit of inventing untruths! And moreover, even if I were, there is no reason why this incident would be more likely to be false than any of the others I have related to you. Come, come, I believe we have passed through too much together to begin to raise questions of this nature at so late a stage. 

In any case, Juan-Bautista’s words plunged me into a deep bout of introspection. I spent that night considering what I had become. There really could be no doubt: I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding to ensure that my own country faced the threat of war. Of course I was struggling! Of course I felt torn! I had thrown in my lot with the men of Underwood Samson, with the officers of the empire, when all along I was predisposed to feel compassion for those, like Juan-Bautista, whose lives the empire thought nothing of overturning for its own gain. 

In the morning, with the demeanor of a man facing a firing squad—no, that is perhaps too dramatic, and a dangerous comparison on this of all evenings, but you understand my intent—I told the vice president that I refused to work any further. He was baffled. “What do you mean, refuse?” he said. “I am done here,” I replied. “I intend to return to New York.” Panic ensued; a conference call with Jim was hastily arranged. “Look, kid,” an uncharacteristically tense Jim said over the speakerphone, “I know you have stuff on your mind. But if you walk out on this now you undermine our firm. You hurt your team. In wartime soldiers don’t really fight for their flags, Changez. They fight for their friends, their buddies. Their team. Well, right now your team is asking you to stay. Afterwards, if you need a break, it’s yours.” 

I must admit, Jim’s words gave me pause. I had great admiration for him; he had always stood by me, and now I proposed to betray him. (617 words)

Priya Ch 11 Changez returns with a beard to New York and is subjected to verbal abuse by complete strangers

When the time came for me to return to New York I told my parents I wanted to stay longer, but they would not hear of it. Perhaps they sensed that I was myself divided, that something called me back to America; perhaps they were simply protecting their son. “Do not forget to shave before you go,” my mother said to me. “Why?” I asked, indicating my father and brother. “They have beards.” “They,” she replied, “have them only because they wish to hide the fact that they are bald. Besides, you are still a boy.” She stroked my stubble with her fingers and added, “It makes you look like a mouse.”  

On the flight I noticed how many of my fellow passengers were similar to me in age: college students and young professionals, heading back after the holidays. I found it ironic; children and the elderly were meant to be sent away from impending battles, but in our case it was the fittest and brightest who were leaving, those who in the past would have been most expected to remain. I was filled with contempt for myself, such contempt that I could not bring myself to converse or to eat. I shut my eyes and waited, and the hours took from me the responsibility even to flee.  

You are not unfamiliar with the anxieties that precede armed conflict, you say? Aha! Then you have been in the service, sir, just as I suspected! Would you not agree that waiting for what is to come is the most difficult part? Yes, quite so, not as difficult as the time of carnage itself—said, sir, like a true soldier. But I see that you have paused in your eating; perhaps you are waiting for fresh bread. Here, have half of mine. No, I insist; our waiter will bring us more momentarily.  

Given your background, you will doubtless have experienced the peculiar phenomenon that is the return to an environment more or less at peace from one where the prospect of large-scale bloodshed is a distinct possibility. It is an odd transition. My colleagues greeted with considerable—although often partially suppressed—consternation my reappearance in our offices. For despite my mother’s request, and my knowledge of the difficulties it could well present me at immigration, I had not shaved my two-week-old beard. It was, perhaps, a form of protest on my part, a symbol of my identity, or perhaps I sought to remind myself of the reality I had just left behind; I do not now recall my precise motivations. I know only that I did not wish to blend in with the army of clean-shaven youngsters who were my coworkers, and that inside me, for multiple reasons, I was deeply angry.  

It is remarkable, given its physical insignificance—it is only a hairstyle, after all—the impact a beard worn by a man of my complexion has on your fellow countrymen. More than once, traveling on the subway—where I had always had the feeling of seamlessly blending in—I was subjected to verbal abuse by complete strangers, and at Underwood Samson I seemed to become overnight a subject of whispers and stares. Wainwright tried to offer me some friendly advice. “Look, man,” he said, “I don’t know what’s up with the beard, but I don’t think it’s making you Mister Popular around here.” “They are common where I come from,” I told him. “Jerk chicken is common where I come from,” he replied, “but I don’t smear it all over my face. You need to be careful. This whole corporate collegiality veneer only goes so deep. Believe me.” (601 words)

Pamela Ch 12 Changez analyses America’s reaction to 9/11

I would like to claim that my final days in New York passed in a state of enlightened calm; nothing could be further from the truth. I was an incoherent and emotional madman, flying off into rages and sinking into depressions. Sometimes I would lie in bed, thinking in circles, asking the same questions about why and where Erica had gone; sometimes I would find myself walking the streets, flaunting my beard as a provocation, craving conflict with anyone foolhardy enough to antagonize me. Affronts were everywhere; the rhetoric emerging from your country at that moment in history—not just from the government, but from the media and supposedly critical journalists as well—provided a ready and constant fuel for my anger. 

It seemed to me then—and to be honest, sir, seems to me still—that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest of humanity, but also in your own. 

I resolved to do so, as best I could. But first I had to depart. I rode to JFK on a crisp, clear afternoon, an afternoon that reminded me of my trip to the institution and the view from that bluff above the Hudson. I thought of Erica removing her clothes and then, having shed her past, walking through the forest until she met a kindly woman who took her in and fed her. I thought of how cold she would have been on that walk. And so I left my jacket on the curb as a sort of offering, as my last gesture before returning to Pakistan, a wish of warmth for Erica—not in the way one leaves flowers for the dead, but rather as one twirls rupees above the living. Later, through the windows of the terminal, I saw that I had caused a security alert, and I shook my head in exasperation. 

What exactly did I do to stop America, you ask? Have you really no idea, sir? You hesitate—never fear, I am not so rude as to forcibly extract an answer. I will tell you what I did, although it was not much and I fear it may well fail to meet your expectations. (438 words)

Shoba Ch 12  In an interview Changez defends a boy who has disappeared into an American detention centre and now feels pursued himself

I was certain that the boy in question had been implicated by mistake. How could I be certain, you ask, if I had no inside knowledge? I must say, sir, you have adopted a decidedly unfriendly and accusatory tone. What precisely is it that you are trying to imply? I can assure you that I am a believer in nonviolence; the spilling of blood is abhorrent to me, save in self-defense. And how broadly do I define self-defense, you ask? Not broadly at all! I am no ally of killers; I am simply a university lecturer, nothing more nor less. 

I see from your expression that you do not believe me. No matter, I am confident of the truth of my words. In any case, it was impossible to ask the boy himself about the matter, as he had disappeared—whisked away to a secret detention facility, no doubt, in some lawless limbo between your country and mine. He and I were not particularly well acquainted, as I have repeatedly testified, but I remembered his shy smile and aptitude for cash-flow statements, and I found myself filled with rage at the mystery surrounding his treatment. When the international television news networks came to our campus, I stated to them among other things that no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as America. I was perhaps more forceful on this topic than I intended. 

Later, it occurred to me that in addition to expressing my dismay, I was possibly trying to attract attention to myself; I had, in my own manner, issued a firefly’s glow bright enough to transcend the boundaries of continents and civilizations. If Erica was watching—which rationally, I knew, she almost certainly was not—she might have seen me and been moved to correspond. I was tugged at by an undercurrent of loss when she did not do so. But my brief interview appeared to resonate: it was replayed for days, and even now an excerpt of it can be seen in the occasional war-on-terror montage. Such was its impact that I was warned by my comrades that America might react to my admittedly intemperate remarks by sending an emissary to intimidate me or worse. 

Since then, I have felt rather like a Kurtz waiting for his Marlow. I have endeavored to live normally, as though nothing has changed, but I have been plagued by paranoia, by an intermittent sense that I am being observed. I even tried to vary my routines—the times I left for work, for example, and the streets I took—but I have come to realize that all this serves no purpose. I must meet my fate when it confronts me, and in the meantime I must conduct myself without panic. Most of all, I must avoid doing what you are doing in this instant, namely constantly looking over my shoulder. It seems to me that you have ceased to listen to my chatter; perhaps you are convinced that I am an inveterate liar, or perhaps you are under the impression that we are being pursued. Really, sir, you would do well to relax. Yes, those men are now rather close, and yes, the expression on the face of that one—what a coincidence; it is our waiter; he has offered me a nod of recognition—is rather grim. But they mean you no harm, I assure you. It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins. 

Ah, we are about to arrive at the gates of your hotel. It is here that you and I shall at last part company. Perhaps our waiter wants to say goodbye as well, for he is rapidly closing in. Yes, he is waving at me to detain you. I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal. Given that you and I are now bound by a certain shared intimacy, I trust it is from the holder of your business cards. (715 words)