The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Rarely will I describe a book as beautiful. Yet I cannot think of a more befitting descriptive for Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST. The story centers around a meeting at an outdoor café in Lahore between a Pakistani man named Changez and a suspicious-looking American with the bearing that makes him out to be either military or intelligence agent. Changez engages the man initially in tea and conversation. After awhile, seeing the American most attentive --and also a bit wary of his surroundings, the Pakistani orders dinner for the two of them; meanwhile going deeper into his memories about times spent in America, as a student at Princeton and later as a rising star at a New York valuation firm. Changez also recollects his budding romance with Erica, the daughter of a wealthy investment banker who was sure to enable Changez's entry to high society. Changez was well on his way to success when the twin towers of the World Trade Center came tumbling down on September 11, 2001. Changez's reaction to their collapse alarms and confuses him; he finds himself smiling and overjoyed. The elation, however, isn't over the deaths of 3,000 innocent people, but rather thet there are those who are able to strike at the United States --an entity which has long held him in awe with its almost limitless power, wealth and ability to affect the world: sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. As America becomes enraged and seeks revenge upon anything and anyone Muslim, he reads reports of Pakistan becoming coerced into the war against Afghanistan and of India taking advantage of this situation threatening his homeland. Becoming ever more distanced from our society and his work, it becomes increasingly harder for Changez to continue at his career. A job which he now sees as dependent upon the expense and suffering of others. Making matters worse, Erica, the one person who perhaps could have kept him grounded and focused, suffers a mental relapse over the shock of 9/11. Erica slips back into the debilitating state she suffered over the death of her longtime childhood friend and lover, Chris, two years earlier. Eventually Changez returns to Pakistan. Changez today is a different man from the ambitious and obedient corporate cog he described living back in New York. Yet as he speaks to the American about his country's indifference to the rest of the world, about America's unconcern for the expense her wars of revenge are costing others, he still he cannot hide his love for America. However, it is no longer the romanticizing love of an infatuated innocent, instead it is the love one has for another depite all the other's faults and abuses. A love reluctant, but love nonetheless. The monologue telling of this story is beguiling. Changez holds the reader spellbound as he keeps the unidentified American man's interest for hours. Mohsin Hamid's gift for words and symbolism, and the intricacies he creates with them, is astounding. Adm

In a recent article in The Washington Post" (7.22.07) titled "ROOTS OF RAGE: "Why Do They Hate Us?", Mohsin Hamid writes about an encounter at a book signing in Texas for "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." He was stopped cold when a man asked the subtitle question in a politely pleasant manner that put both author and reader in the "us" category. Hamid notes that he had spent almost half his life in the United States: emigrating from Lahore, Pakistan at the age of three with his father (who was accepted to a PhD program at Stanford), learning to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" before the Pakistan national anthem, playing baseball before cricket, writing English before Urdu, and other activities of a typical American kid. The question cut to the quick because in many ways he is, or it seems should be, one of us. The Post piece goes on to lay out an autobiography which in considerable part became the plot of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." Hamid returned to Lahore at the age of nine, growing up there pleasurably before the city was adversely impacted economically and culturally (strict morality codes, intimidation of politicians, academics, and journalists) by American backing of Pakistan's dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in exchange for Zia's support of the mujaheddin, the Afghan guerrilla group fighting the Russian occupation which later became an American holy war adversary. Like the character Changez in the novel, he returned to the United States to attend Princeton University. How much of the remainder of the book (Changez's outstanding performance in a business evaluation firm prior to being fired in debilitating disenchantment when he recognized the havoc his work was causing in the global workplace, the American girlfriend who ultimately fails him, et cetera) is unknown. But there is enough to support the notion that fiction, well written, can often articulate more basic truth than nonfiction. And "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is brilliantly and beautifully written. There is no action (no bombs, no bullets, no noisy chaos) but there is suspense, gripping suspense (the feeling that something rather awful may happen at any moment), as Changez spends an evening over dinner telling his story to an American at a restaurant at a disquieting Lahore market. We never know the American's name or anything about him (whether businessman, tourist,, government agent)) except for his excruciating fear in the exotic foreign setting in which he finds himself. All this is conveyed through the narrative voice of Changez interpreting the American's reaction as the story unfolds. The unnamed American is a stand-in, the nervous visitor in a strange foreign land, for all of us as we ponder the ghosts and goblins of the war on terror. Uneasy and watchful in that eerie marketplace, he could be any one of us anywhere. The girl with whom Changez falls in love is also, in a sense, a prototype for an America that cannot give up the memory of a dead lover (our nostalgia

Like Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant NEVER LET ME GO, this fantastic novel is one that you should finish before reading reviews since knowing too much of the plot will spoil this story for you. Also set aside enough time to finish THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST in one sitting for you will not be be able to put it down. I was hooked by page 4--the novel is slim, consisting of 184 pages but it is too rich and intense to be much longer-- when the narrator describes Princeton University as raising her skirt "for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and--as you say in America--showed them some skin." About that narrator-- he is a Pakistani named Changez who is now 25 years old who is telling his story to an unnamed nervous American as they have a meal at a cafe in Lahore ("there is no need to reach under your jacket, I assume to grasp your wallet"). Educated at Princeton and the recipient of financial aid, he accepted a position at the high-powered financial firm of Underwood Samson immediately out of college and worked tirelessly, always achieving more than his elite American co-workers. He also fell in love with the beautiful but sad American Erica. He was in Manilla on assignment on that ignominious day of September 11 when his world, and those of many others, changed. Enough of the plot. Changez' extended dramatic monologue will affect you in many different ways. You will be at once sympathetic to this complex character but repelled by him. Mr. Hamid's richly nuanced novel will keep you reading as the tension builds. He asks difficult questions that many of us would choose to avoid, specifically about the perception of the United States in the Middle East and other parts of the world as well and the reasons why we are hated so. In Changez he has created a character that you will not soon forget. The title of the novel speaks multitudes.