The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“You seem worried. Do not be; this burly fellow is merely our waiter, and there is no need to reach under your jacket, I assume to grasp your wallet …”

The apprehension shown here by the American stranger sets the stage for his unusual behavior throughout the novel. It leaves the reader, like Changez, wondering why he’s so uneasy, what his purpose is in Lahore and what exactly he might be hiding. Changez’s arch “assumption” that the stranger is reaching for his wallet cleverly raises the question in the reader’s mind of what else he might have in his jacket.

“Confronted with this reality, one has two choices: pretend all is well or work hard to restore things to what they were.” 

Changez mentions this in reference to the declining purchasing power of elite and middle class Pakistanis, though the quote stands as a powerful testament to Changez’s eventual stance in relation to what he saw as problematic with America and its role in the global environment.

“She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon magnetism … yet one got the sense that she existed internally at a degree of remove from those around her … some part of her … was out of reach, lost in thoughts unsaid.”

Changez notices this aspect of Erica early on in the novel and yet is held under her sway even after leaving America for good. It is also a noteworthy description of Erica as a symbol for America—and the American dream—that Changez abandons.

“So I kind of miss home, too,” she said. “Except my home was a guy with long, skinny fingers.”

Erica’s homesickness cannot be cured as easily as Changez’s, who can return home to Lahore; she longs for a time and place with a dead man, a longing which can never be fulfilled.

“When my turn came, I said I hoped one day to be the dictator of an Islamic Republic with nuclear capability; the others appeared shocked, and I was forced to explain that I had been joking.”

Though a joke, Changez both highlights the thin line between allegiance and betrayal with his American “friends” and foreshadows his own reluctant path towards fundamentalism in the future. Given that this incident occurs prior to 9/11, the novel also points to the fact that social prejudice against Muslims in America was not solely the result of the attack on the Twin Towers.

“The frequency and purposefulness with which you glance about … brings to mind the behaviour of an animal that has ventured too far from its lair and is now, in unfamiliar surroundings, uncertain whether it is predator or prey!”

Changez’s description of the stranger highlights the suspenseful aspect of the novel, as the reader is prompted to consider which of the characters mentioned at the Lahore café is the predator and which is the prey.

“Often, during my stay in your country, such comparisons troubled me. In fact, they did more than trouble me: they made me resentful. Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities…while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. Now our cities were largely unplanned…And America had universities with individual endowments greater than our national budget for education.”

Changez’s repulsion shows how deep class-consciousness runs and the sense of the Old World having to—or being forced to—make way for the New World.

“At Underwood Samson, creativity was not excised … but it ceded its primacy to efficiency. Maximum return was the maxim to which we returned, time and again.”

This highlights the work ethic that Changez adopted during his time in America, and which, in the end, caused him to realize that the human element was missing from his everyday affairs.

“It struck me then—no, I must be honest, it strikes me now—that shorn of hair    and dressed in battle fatigues, we would have been virtually indistinguishable.”

Changez describes the striking similarity of his fellow coworkers in terms of   military personnel, highlighting both the factory-like production of like-minded individuals of the business world and the fact that, for all intents and purposes, his work ethic was similar to a military code of conduct.

“I see that you have noticed the scar on my forearm … I detect a certain seriousness in your expression, as though you are wondering what sort of training camp could have given a fellow from the plains such as myself cause to engage in these activities!”

The offhand comment reinforces that fact that the stranger is still suspicious of Changez and might know more about his past than he is letting on; it also shows that Changez knows exactly what the American stranger is surmising about who he is or might be and his reason for returning to Lahore.

“‘I’m more unsettled than nervous,’ she said. ҅It’s like I’m an oyster. I’ve had this sharp speck inside me for a long time, and I’ve been trying to make it more comfortable, so slowly I’ve turned it into a pearl. But now it’s finally being taken out, and just as it’s going I’m realizing there’s a gap being left behind … and so I kind of want to hold onto it a little longer.’”

Erica’s explanation of her reluctance to send out her manuscript is a clear indication on her reliance on the past and stasis to help balance her life; movement or progression seems to unbalance her, as will be demonstrated later on in the novel.

“I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a diamond that becomes visible only when viewed through a magnifying lens…”

Changez is beginning to understand the significance of Erica’s nostalgia and her failure to move on from Chris; he notices now that she isn’t hiding something broken, but that she herself is the broken piece.

“‘I like Pakistanis. But the elite has raped the place well and good, right? And fundamentalism. You guys have got a serious problem with fundamentalism’ … his tone—with … its typically American undercurrent of condescension—struck a negative chord with me.”

Erica’s father’s opinions represent those of the average American, informed by the American media and proud of America’s stance against fundamentalism, so oblivious that he can say this to his daughter’s Pakistani friend over dinner without batting an eye.

“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.”

Changez begins to see his coworkers through the eyes of a “Third World sensibility,” and though he continues working on the project in Manila, he realizes how foreign he is in relation to his coworkers.

“And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkable pleased …. I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees.” 

This confession marks a turning point for Changez and in the reader’s perception of him. The pleasure he takes in America’s suffering is ironic given the life he has made for himself there and signals his growing dissatisfaction with the country. 

“I attempted to separate myself from the situation, to listen to her as though I were not both aching for her and hurt that—seemingly despite herself—her body had rejected me.” 

Erica’s fixation on the past and on her dead boyfriend is so powerful that she can’t even allow Changez into her life. She doesn’t get aroused physically by him and the thought hurts him, considering how much he wants to be there for her.

They try to resist change. Power comes from becoming change.”

Jim offers this insight to Changez regarding disgruntled workers who are threating the Underwood Samson project team in New Jersey. It also speaks to the larger issue that Changez will face in embracing change and, by leaving America, becoming the change he seeks.

“For we were not always burdened by debt, dependent on foreign aid and handouts; in the stories we tell of ourselves we were not the crazed and destructive radicals … but rather saints and poets … conquering kings.”

Changez alludes to the rich history of his homeland, a history that at one point in time and in his infatuation with America, he neglected and felt ashamed of. He’s now realizing what a rich heritage he has and how it needs to be protected.

“But I think I knew even then that she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia, one from which only she could choose whether or not to return …. It seemed to me that America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia at that time … I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back.”

Changez notes that both Erica and America have been lost to him, both absorbed by their nostalgia for a time that may never have even existed.

“I cannot now recall many of the details of the events I have been relating to you. 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 stranger questions Changez about a particular detail of his narrative, causing Changez to admit that he may or may not be remembering details accurately. This admission contributes to Changez’s status as an unreliable narrator, and causes both the reader and the stranger to ask whether or not Changez has been telling the truth from the very beginning. Changez defends himself by comparing his narrative to history—specifically American history—suggesting that in such official narratives details are often conveniently falsified or obscured.

“You are not unfamiliar with the anxieties that precede armed conflict, you say? Aha! Then you have been in the service, sire, just as I suspected! Would you not agree that waiting for what is to come is the most difficult part?”

Changez’s skills at valuation are apparent throughout the novel, but this quote sums up his accurate assessment of the American stranger from the beginning of the novel. It also suggests that Changez has military experience and that, like the stranger, he is waiting for something to happen. The implication is that he has some idea of the stranger’s purpose in Lahore but he does not share this knowledge with the reader, heightening the suspense as the novel moves towards its conclusion. 

“‘Have you heard of the janissaries?’ ‘No,’ I said … ‘They were ferocious and utterly loyal: they had fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to return to.’ … ‘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.”

The conversation about the janissaries between Changez and Juan-Bautista is a pivotal moment in the development of Changez’s thinking about his place in America and his feelings towards his “adopted empire.” He begins to make sense of his conflicted feelings and notes that Juan-Bautista also noticed this conflict within him. Like the janissaries, Changez has been recruited to fight for America, even against his own country. Unlike the janissaries, however, and as Juan-Bautista remarks, Changez has memories that can and will allow him to abandon his “adopted empire” in favor of his homeland.

“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.”

Changez tells the stranger that America never understood—and perhaps still doesn’t—that suffering goes both ways. A country feels slighted and so acts out, causing further pain. America was unable to realize that its suffering was part of a larger ocean of pain and suffering; it acted out like a child having tantrums, and because of this, caused more suffering. In the end, this type of posturing is a Catch-22; it is always caused by pain and it always causes more pain in turn, an endless cycle.