The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Author: Mohsin Hamid
Rating: 5/5
Reason for Reading: Recommendation from Wendy

Let me set the scene for you. I think the book cover does it better than I could hope to, so I will share:

At a cafe table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter.

Doesn't that sound intriguing? Along with the title, I had to pick up this book.

The reluctant fundamentalist is a man named Changez. In this book, he relates the story of how he fell out of love with his one-time adoptive homeland of America. To the mysterious American, and the reader, he relates the perfect life he had built for himself in New York. A graduate of Princeton, he'd begun working a high-paying job at the prestigious valuation firm,
Underwood Samson, and spending his spare time courting a beautiful classmate. The turning point, he explains, happened after September 11th.

The change isn't immediate. After 9/11, the ghosts of his girlfriend's past begin to envelop her as she withdraws from him. And as he watches New Yorkers absorb the impact of the terrorist attacks, he begins to question where his loyalty truly lies.

This book gives fresh perspective to an event that has been so picked over, so analyzed, it seems a wonder that there can be anything new to say about it. Through Changez's eyes, we get a glimpse of what the American policies and sudden upsurge of patriotism post 9/11 must have looked like to those who were most deeply affected by the "war on terror". What it must have felt like to be stopped at every security point in the airport, to be looked at with suspicion because of the simple act of growing a beard.

When we arrived [at the airport], 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 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 a tattooed man in handcuffs.... As a consequence, I rode to Manhattan that evening very much alone.

This is a simple story, even more effective because it doesn't hit us over the head with facts or rhetoric or black and white ultimatums. It simply asks us to be quiet for a minute and look at a familiar event through different eyes.

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