The Submission

Mo laughs at how Claire manipulated her audience by bringing the MACC leaders on board, but he realizes his initial view of Claire as a principled woman has collapsed. He had intended to bring Easterners and Westerners together, but they have come together to work against him. Malik’s speech makes Mo wonder where the line between his own principles and ambitions lay. His lawyer assures him that he has a strong case, that the battle can yet be won, but this is not Mo’s primary concern. At work, Mo is not allowed to associate with clients or contractors.

Mo makes a trip to Kabul. Armed with a 30-year-old guidebook, he explores the city. He’s amazed at the poverty and how little remains of the beautiful capital city described in the guidebook. While walking along, Mo is struck by the desperate need to defecate. He stops an old man to ask where to find a restroom and ends up pantomiming the process by sitting on his haunches and patting himself. Mo walks through a slum, seeing the filth and the Kabul River nearly dried up, used now only for washing clothes. He finally reaches a beautiful garden called Bag-e-Babur, built in 1526 by a pre-Muslim Moghul. The garden is full of fruit trees and walkways; it also has a swimming pool and a mosque. It is in the process of being restored after Afghanistan’s civil war.

Beautiful as it is, Mo’s trained eye sees all its aesthetic flaws. It looks like a random, poorly designed city. He sees a boy grooming himself with a mirror at a fountain and other boys playing a game that’s part cricket, part croquet. Women raise their burkas to sun their faces. Dusk finally arrives when he hears the Muslim call to prayer. He sees a lone young man praying.

Mo recalls when he accompanied his father to the mosque in Virginia and how he saw young professional men like himself with Blackberries strapped to their sides. Their bended bodies knelt in prayer made Mo think that praying should be a solitary activity. But now, here in Kabul, he realizes that no one notices him. He then realizes that forgetting himself was the “truest submission.”

The novel flashes forward. We see Mo at nearly 60. He has moved to Mumbai, India, and lives on the top floor of a building he designed. Although the successful K/K Architects (Kroll and Khan) operates primarily out of New York, Mo does most of his work in South Asia and the Middle East. He never married or had children, not out of lack of desire. Rather, time passed and it never happened.

One day Mo meets with a smartly dressed documentary maker named Molly and her cameraman. They are making a film about how the process of making a memorial is itself part of the memorial. Before they begin interviewing Mo, they show him the film they took of the other chief players in the event. It opens with Paul’s scathing obituary saying his ineptitude set back America’s grieving process. On film, his wife Edith defends him. She says Paul had been like a father to Mo, who acted like a resistant son. She says he’d also tried to mentor Claire, but she had “ambitions.” The governor, Geraldine Bitman, became vice president, and Issam Malik became a member of Congress. Debbie Dawson became a Lou Sarge type figure, emerging as Malik’s new verbal sparring partner. Asma’s body and Abdul were flown back to Bangladesh, and the boy made a shrine of all the lovely things she had packed for him. Nasruddin is shown polishing an object that commemorates Asma.

In the process of viewing the film and conducting the interview, Mo learns that the jury, particularly Ariana, had planned to back him. In her interview Claire appears ill and wears a headscarf. She comments about Mo’s character, about how he was rigid and unwilling to answer any of her questions. Yet she acknowledges the superiority of Mo’s design and says she has visited the actual memorial only once. She apologizes to Mo in her taping.

As it turns out, a rich Arab commissioned Mo to build the garden on private property, and Mo invites Molly to film it for Claire. Upon seeing the footage, Claire is astounded. She turns to the cameraman, asks if he told Mo who he was. The cameraman is William, Claire’s son; Molly is William’s girlfriend. Neither revealed their connection to Claire, for fear Mo would no longer be willing to show them his garden.

Claire remembers William in his younger days, when he was repeatedly told about the garden that was going to be built. William had not been serious about his school work, but he managed to get into art school. He and Molly had convinced Claire that the documentary needed to be made.

Together, they marvel at the garden until a wall comes into view. Rather than names, it is engraved with Arabic writing. Mo had told them it was from the Quran. Before the film ends, it cuts to a scene in the corner of the garden, where William placed a small pile of rocks, one last cairn to help Cal find his way home.