The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist has a simple but interesting format: beginning with the line, “Excuse me sir, but may I be of assistance?”, a young and bearded native of Lahore named Changez accompanies an uncomfortable American businessman to a cafe, and as the day turns to night, Changez tells the story of his own years living in America, causing the businessman to become increasingly agitated. The American's speech is never recorded but his end of the conversation is demonstrated through Changez's sporadic interruptions of his own monologue with lines like, “But why do you flinch?” or “What did he look like, you ask?”. By the end, it seems pretty obvious that this isn't a random meeting; but if one of these men means the other harm, which one is the intended victim? Everything after this is spoilers; hard to talk about this book without getting into specifics.

Changez's story is straightforward: after graduating head of his class at Princeton, he gets a high-paying job with a firm that assigns values to companies that are ripe for corporate takeover. He also falls in love with a rich blonde New Yorker who can't get over the death of her first love. When 9/11 shocks the city and Changez begins to suffer the suspicious glances of his neighbours, he begins to question how much he really belongs in America. As his family back in Pakistan begins to feel the effects of a ramp-up to war with India, Changez returns home and becomes a university lecturer; either becoming an anti-American radical or incorrectly accused thereof. So what would prompt a man to lead a stranger to a cafe table and lay out these details, many of which were very personal and unflattering? Is Changez laying a trap or making a preemptive explanation to a would-be murderer?

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.

Changez's story is also an allegory: I'm not someone who ever reads meaning into names, but author Mohsin Hamid is pleading for it with this book. “Changez” not only has the English connotations of instability and maybe even revolution, but it is also the Urdu (Changez's first language) for “Genghis”. The woman he's in love with is named Erica and her dead boyfriend was Chris; after 9/11, she becomes paralysed by her nostalgia for her former relationship and it becomes hit-over-the-head obvious that Hamid is talking about (Am)Erica grasping for meaning in her former roots with Chris(tianity). The company Changez works for is called Underwood Samson – or Uncle Sam, yuk yuk – and its mission to facilitate regime-change based purely on profits and losses, with zero regard for the people these takeovers might affect, assigns to a typical American company the world's view of a typical American military intervention. Even the title about being a “reluctant fundamentalist” refers to Changez's time with Underwood Samson as their company mantra of “focus on the fundamentals” is the only time that word is used in the book; making it clear that although (Am)Erica may have had a knee-jerk reversion to Chris(tianity) post-9/11, corporate greed is the true and fundamental religion of the USA. If there is a secondary meaning – if Changez has indeed become a radical fundamentalist – well, that's America's fault, too. The final scene sees Changez walking the American back to his hotel – followed by some toughs from the cafe – and as the American reaches for something in his pocket, flashing a glint of metal, Changez says, “I trust it is from the holder of your business cards.” It seems pretty obvious that whether the American is reaching for a gun or a business card – whether he works for a company or The Company – it's all the same: whether in war or business dealings, America is bad and deserves what's coming to it.

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 see that quite a few American universities are giving copies of The Reluctant Fundamentalist to incoming freshman classes, and I wonder if that's purely a sign of liberal self-loathing. As a Canadian, I don't feel particularly defensive about the thrust of this book, and I think it is valuable for how it lays out a Pakistani point-of-view; why a young Muslim man who had his piece of the American Dream couldn't help but smile when he saw the World Trade Center towers crumble to the ground. I appreciated that, although Changez had been a scholarship student at Princeton, that didn't mean he came from a dirt poor background; just as globalisation had reduced his family to a type of genteel poverty, Changez repeatedly makes the case that this is true for Pakistan as a whole. We in the West might imagine Pakistan as a poor backwater, but as Changez says, “Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians.” and “We built the Royal Mosque and the Shalimar Gardens in this city, and we built the Lahore Fort with its mighty walls and wide ramp for our battle-elephants. And we did these things when your country was still a collection of thirteen small colonies, gnawing away at the edge of a continent.”; he even gently mocks Princeton for having been built of acid-washed blocks to imitate the type of antiquity his country is entirely composed of. I don't know if I was ever aware of India's threat to Pakistan post-9/11 and it was understandable that Changez was bitter that the American government took India's side in the conflict, despite the Pakistani government allowing the Americans to launch airstrikes against Afghanistan from their territory. If all of those freshmen are being encouraged to read this book in order to gain a more nuanced view of world affairs – if the message isn't simply America bad – then I can certainly see its value. 

But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you – an American – will agree, it is the thrust of one’s narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one’s details.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite a short read at about three hours, and despite Hamid writing that a novella is “a platypus of a beast”, I think it achieves what he set out to achieve. But even though it preserves a certain viewpoint, that doesn't mean that I found it to be all that deep or particularly well-written. I'd probably give it 3.5 stars and am rounding down to keep it out of “I loved it” territory.

The following isn't hardly even tangentially related, but it struck me as significant of something earlier this morning and I needed a place to put it. On Facebook, I noted that my mother had made a comment on a Humans of New York post, so I clicked to see what had interested her. The "human" said:

“I grew up in the church. I accepted Christ when I was seven years old. At the age of sixteen, I decided to dedicate my life to serving Jesus while attending a mission camp worship service. My biggest accomplishment is all the times I’ve helped young kids find a relationship with Christ. And my biggest goal in life is to tell everyone about Jesus. I’m here in New York trying to plant churches. It’s a mission field unlike any other. There are people here from all over the world, so the message you spread here can travel anywhere. I know all my answers are super churchy, but feel free to share it. I won’t be reading the comment section.”

And my mother commented:

"Too bad you won't read the comments (whomever) because I had something relevant to say. You might have learned something."

How condescending is that? My mother was raised by strict and devout Catholic parents -- attending masses even before school; where she was taught by severe nuns who refused to answer my mother's philosophically thorny questions -- and although she had us baptised and sent us to Catholic schools, she never attended mass after leaving home and grew to despise the church as paternalistic (a revelation she came to embrace ever more fanatically during the bra-burning '70s) and grew even more disgusted as she watched her saintly father's heart break over the revelations of sexual abuse in the '90s; was sickened (for good reason) that her father's priest refused to offer him counsel or even listen to his sorrow, ever protective of Mother Church. What in all of that might my mother have wanted to share with a devout missionary Christian? What might this churchy woman have "learned"? As a further note, my mother is exactly the type of anti-American liberal who would delight in a book that lays the blame for 9/11 at America's feet (although she wouldn't use the word "America" because she hates the USA's use of the word "America"; because "We Canadians live in North America, too. What about South Americans? Who agreed that people from the USA  get the exclusive use of that word?" What does that even mean? I have never met another Canadian who wishes we could call ourselves Americans if only our southern neighbours hadn't co-opted it like they do everything else.) Maybe there's some kind of a connection in here after all...