The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

  I knew bits and pieces of their story from before; that night I received it whole. Something of it seemed familiar to me; later I would realize what seemed familiar was the emotion with which she spoke, an emotion similar to that which she evoked in me. 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. I succeeded in this to an extent that surprises me still, when I think of it today. Their story remains vivid in my mind, but I will not recount it now. Suffice it to say that theirs had been an unusual love, with such a degree of commingling of identities that when Chris died, Erica felt she had lost herself; even now, she said, she did not know if she could be found.

  But as she spoke of him, her voice seemed to strengthen, and I felt her naked body soften and relax beside me. A liveliness entered her eyes; they ceased to be turned inward. She asked me about my experiences, about the nature of sex and relationships for teenagers in Pakistan. I told her I had had next to nothing in the way of sex before coming to America, and my relationships hardly amounted to much in the face of what she had just recounted. But they were delightful in their own way, I said, and I entertained her with anecdotes of Lahore for what seemed like hours. At one point I found myself gazing up at the ceiling as though I were gazing at the stars, and the two of us started to laugh. I felt we were at last becoming comfortable in the same bed, and as the sky outside began to lighten, I was compelled to stifle a good-natured yawn. She, too, was drowsy, she said, adding that I was better than any medication at putting her at ease. We fell asleep like that, not in one another’s arms, but shoulder to shoulder, with our knuckles touching at our sides. Perhaps because of our conversation I dreamed not of Erica, but of home; what she dreamed of I did not know…

  But I observe, sir, that you are watching me with a rather peculiar expression. Possibly you find me crass for revealing such intimacies to you, a stranger? No? I will interpret that movement of your head as a response in the negative. Allow me to assure you that I do not always speak this openly; indeed, I almost never do. But tonight, as I think we both understand, is a night of some importance. Certainly I perceive it to be so—and yet if I am wrong, you will surely be justified in regarding me the most terrible boor!

  7.

  I WONDER NOW, sir, whether I believed at all in the firmness of the foundations of the new life I was attempting to construct for myself in New York. Certainly I wanted to believe; at least I wanted not to disbelieve with such an intensity that I prevented myself as much as was possible from making the obvious connection between the crumbling of the world around me and the impending destruction of my personal American dream. The power of my blinders shocks me, looking back—so stark in retrospect were the portents of coming disaster in the news, on the streets, and in the state of the woman with whom I had become enamored.

  America was gripped by a growing and self-righteous rage in those weeks of September and October as I cavorted about with Erica; the mighty host I had expected of your country was duly raised and dispatched—but homeward, towards my family in Pakistan. When I spoke to them on the telephone, my mother was frightened, my brother was angry, and my father was stoical—this would all pass, he said. I found reassurance in my father’s views, and I dressed myself in them as though they were my own. “Are you worried, man?” Wainwright asked me one day in the Underwood Samson cafeteria, resting his hand on my shoulder in a gesture of concern as I filled a bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese. No, I explained, Pakistan had pledged its support to the United States, the Taliban’s threats of retaliation were meaningless, my family would be just fine.

  I ignored as best I could the rumors I overheard at the Pak-Punjab Deli: Pakistani cabdrivers were being beaten to within an inch of their lives; the FBI was raiding mosques, shops, and even people’s houses; Muslim men were disappearing, perhaps into shadowy detention centers for questioning, perhaps into shadowy detention centres for questioning or worse. I reasoned that these stories were mostly untrue; the few with some basis in fact wee almost certainly being exaggerated; and besides, those rare cases of abuse that regrettably did transpire were unlikely ever to affect me because such things invariably happened, in America as in all countries, to the hapless poor, not to Princeton graduates earning eighty thousand dollars a year.

  Thus clad in my armor of denial I was able to focus—with continuing and noteworthy success—on my job. After the exceptional review I received for my performance in the Philippines, I had become Jim’s fair-haired boy. He offered me another assignment on one of his teams, this time valuing an ailing cable operator. The firm was based in New Jersey—to which I began a daily commute—and had been hit hard by the decline in investor sentiment surrounding the technology sector in general and small-scale broadband providers in particular; it was barely able to service its debts and had become a prime candidate for acquisition.

  On this occasion, our client was unconcerned with the potential for future growth. No, our mandate was to determine how much fat could be cut. Call centres, it was evident, could be outsourced; truck rolls could be reduced; purchasing could be consolidated with our client’s existing operations. The potential for headcount reduction was substantial—and hence the reception our team received from the employees of the company was frosty indeed. Our telephone extensions and fax machines would mysteriously stop working; our security badges and notebooks would disappear. Often I would emerge into the car park to find that one of the tires of my rental car was punctured—far too often for it to be mere coincidence.

  Once this happened when Jim had come out for the day; he had asked me to give him a ride back to the city. He shook his head as I brought out the spare. “Don’t let it get you down, Changez,” he said. “Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.” He loosened the metal strap of his watch, a solid, diver’s chronometer, and let it slide to his knuckles. “When I was in college,” he went on, “the economy was in bad shape. It was the seventies. Stagflation. But you could just smell the opportunity. America was shifting from manufacturing to services, a huge shift, bigger than anything we’d ever seen. My father had lived and died making things with his hands, so I knew from up close that that time was past.” He refastened the clasp of his watch. Then he made a fist and twisted his thick forearm from side to side, slowly, until the instrument found its level. There was an almost ritualistic quality to his movements, like a batsman—or even, I would say, a knight—donning his gloves before striding onto a field of contest.

  “The economy’s an animal,” Jim continued. “It evolves. First it needed muscle. Now all the blood it could spare was rushing to its brain. That’s where I wanted to be. In finance. In the coordination business. And that’s where you are. You’re blood brought from some part of the body that the species doesn’t need anymore. The tailbone. Like me. We came from places that were wasting away.” I had finished replacing the tire, so I shut the boot and unlocked the doors. “Most people don’t recognize that, kid,” he said, buckling himself in beside me and nodding his head in the direction of the darkened building we had left. “They try to resist change. Power comes from becoming change.”

  I considered what Jim had said—both that evening, on the drive to Manhattan, and in the weeks that followed. There was a certain ring of truth to his words, but I was uncomfortable with the idea that the place I came from was condemned to atrophy. So I dwelled instead on the positive aspect of his little sermon: on the idea that I had chosen a field of endeavor that would be of ever-greater importance to humanity and would be likely, therefore, to provide me with ever-increasing returns. I also found myself better equipped to regard as misguided—or at least myopic—the resentment which seethed around us as we went about our business that autumn in that New Jersey corporate park.

  But it would not be true to say I was completely untroubled. There were older people among the workers of the cable company. I sometimes sat nea
r them in the cafeteria—although never at the same table; the seats beside our team always went untaken—and I imagined many of them had children my age. If English had a respectful form of the word you—as we do in Urdu—I would have used it to address them without the slightest hesitation. As it was, the nature of our interactions left me with minimal scope to show them deference—or even sympathy. I remarked upon this to Wainwright on one of the many weekend nights we found ourselves spending at the office, and he said, “You’re working for the man, buddy. Didn’t anyone tell you that at orientation?” Then he gave me a tired smile and added, “But I get where you’re coming from. Just remember your deals would go ahead whether you worked on them or not. And focus on the fundamentals.”

  Focus on the fundamentals. This was Underwood Samson’s guiding principle, drilled into us since our first day at work. It mandated a single-minded attention to financial detail, teasing out the true nature of those drivers that determine an asset’s value. And that was precisely what I continued to do, more often than not with both skill and enthusiasm. Because to be perfectly honest, sir, the compassionate pangs I felt for soon-to-be-redundant workers were not overwhelming in their frequency; our job required a degree of commitment that left one with rather limited time for such distractions.

  But then, in the latter part of October, something happened that upset my equanimity. It was shortly after Erica and I had abortively attempted to make love—perhaps a day or two later, although I can no longer precisely recall. The bombing of Afghanistan had already been under way for a fortnight, and I had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twenty-first-century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming—in a bar, say, or at the entrance to the cable company’s offices—I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so that the machines were cast as heroes.

  What left me shaken, however, occurred when I turned on the television myself. I had reached home from New Jersey after midnight and was flipping through the channels, looking for a soothing sitcom, when I chanced upon a newscast with ghostly night-vision images of American troops dropping into Afghanistan for what was described as a daring raid on a Taliban command post. My reaction caught me by surprise; Afghanistan was Pakistan’s neighbor, our friend, and a fellow Muslim nation besides, and the sight of what I took to be the beginning of its invasion by your countrymen caused me to tremble with fury. I had to sit down to calm myself, and I remember polishing off a third of a bottle of whiskey before I was able to fall asleep.

  The next morning I was, for the first time, late for work. I had overslept and woken with a cracking headache. My fury had ebbed, but much though I wished to pretend I had imagined it entirely, I was no longer capable of so thorough a self-deception. I did, however, tell myself that I had overreacted, that there was nothing I could do, and that all these world events were playing out on a stage of no relevance to my personal life. But I remained aware of the embers glowing within me, and that day I found it difficult to concentrate on the pursuit—at which I was normally so capable—of fundamentals.

  But listen! Did you hear that, sir, a muffled growl, as if of a young lion held captive in a gunnysack? That was my stomach protesting at going unfed. Let us now order our dinner. You would rather wait, you say, and eat upon your return to your hotel? But I insist! You must not pass up such an authentic introduction to Lahori cuisine; it will, given the dishes for which this market is justifiably renowned, be a purely carnivorous feast—one that harks back to an era before man’s knowledge of cholesterol made him fearful of his prey—and all the more delectable for it.

  Perhaps because we currently lack wealth, power, or even sporting glory—the occasional brilliance of our temperamental cricket team notwithstanding—commensurate with our status as the world’s sixth most populous country, we Pakistanis tend to take an inordinate pride in our food. Here in Old Anarkali that pride is visible in the purity of the fare on offer; not one of these worthy restaurateurs would consider placing a western dish on his menu. No, we are surrounded instead by the kebab of mutton, the tikka of chicken, the stewed foot of goat, the spiced brain of sheep! These, sir, are predatory delicacies, delicacies imbued with a hint of luxury, of wanton abandon. Not for us the vegetarian recipes one finds across the border to the east, nor the sanitized, sterilized, processed meats so common in your homeland! Here we are not squeamish when it comes to facing the consequences of our desire.

  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 destitute radicals you see on your television channels but rather saints and poets and—yes—conquering kings. 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.

  But once more I am raising my voice, and making you rather uncomfortable besides. I apologize; it was not my intention to be rude. In any case, I ought instead to be explaining to you why I did not speak to Erica of my fury at seeing American troops enter Afghanistan. After that night when we celebrated in my bed her obtaining an agent, I had no contact with Erica for several days; she did not answer when I rang and she did not respond to my messages. I was hurt by this behavior—taking her silence for inconsideration—and I arrived in a reproachful mood for the drink that she eventually did invite me to. I was utterly unprepared for what I saw.

  At the counter was a diminished Erica, not the vivid, confident woman I knew but a pale, nervous creature who could almost have been a stranger. She seemed to have lost weight and her eyes darted about the bar. It was not until she smiled that something of the old Erica glimmered within her, but her smile left her face as quickly as it had come. My consternation must have been evident because she smiled again and said, “Do I look that bad?” “Not at all,” I lied, “just tired, perhaps. Have you been unwell?” “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.” “That is quite all right,” I said. “I hope I was not a pest.” “Never,” she said. “I’ve been going through a bad patch. It’s happened before. But it hasn’t been like this since the first time, after Chris died.”

  We ordered, beer for myself and a bottle of water for her, and I considered giving her an embrace but decided against it; she seemed too brittle to be touched. “What happens is,” she went on, “my mind starts to go in circles, thinking and thinking, and then I can’t sleep. And once a couple of days go by, if you haven’t slept, you start to get sick. You can’t eat. You start to cry. It just feeds on itself. I’ve got some stronger stuff from the doctor, so I’ve been sleeping again. But it isn’t real sleep. And the rest of the day I feel like I’m out of it. Like when you get off a plane and you can’t hear properly. Like that, except it’s not just my hearing, and I can’t pop my ears.” She took a sip of her water and managed to wink at me. Then she said, “Freaky, huh?”

  I stood there in silence, unable to think of what to say or even to offer her a smile; I was horrified. But she was waiting for me to respond, so I said, “But what is it you think of that causes you to become so upset?” “I think of Chris a lot,” she said, “and I think of me. I think of my book. I think some pretty dark thoughts, sometimes. And I think of you.” “What do you think of,” I asked, “when you think of me?” “I think it isn’t good for you to see me so much right now,” she answered. “I mean it isn’t good for you.” “No,” I reassured her, although I was frightened, “I want to see you.” “That’s what I mean,” she said, looking into my eyes with great seriousness. “Do you get it? That’s what I mean.”

  I did not get it in the least, and I asked her to come home with me. “I don’t think I
should,” she said. “Really.” But there was a softness in her expression, and when I continued to insist, she finally did acquiesce. During our taxi ride my mind struggled to comprehend what was happening. I had over these past weeks—sentimental and old-fashioned as it may sound, but then I was raised in a family where brief courtships were the norm—been indulging in daydreams of a life as Erica’s husband; now I found not just those daydreams but the woman herself vanishing before my eyes. I wanted to help her, to hold on to her—indeed, I wanted to hold on to us—and I was desperate to extricate her from the maze of her psychosis. But I did not know how to proceed.

  In my bed she asked me to put my arms around her, and I did so, speaking quietly in her ear. I knew she enjoyed my stories of Pakistan, so I rambled on about my family and Lahore. When I tried to kiss her, she did not move her lips or shut her eyes. So I shut them for her and asked, “Are you missing Chris?” She nodded, and I saw tears begin to force themselves between her lashes. “Then pretend,” I said, “pretend I am him.” I do not know why I said it; I felt overcome and it seemed, suddenly, a possible way forward. “What?” she said, but she did not open her eyes. “Pretend I am him,” I said again. And slowly, in darkness and in silence, we did.

  I do not know how to describe my experience of what happened next; I cannot, of course, claim that I was possessed, but at the same time I did not seem to be myself. It was as though we were under a spell, transported to a world where I was Chris and she was with Chris, and we made love with a physical intimacy that Erica and I had never enjoyed. Her body denied mine no longer; I watched her shut eyes, and her shut eyes watched him.