Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is generally classified as a post 9/11 fiction which probes into the issue of fundamentalism. The author does not define exactly what he means by fundamentalism but teases out the significance and consequence of the mental borders that we create and preserve. He starts with an unusual beginning, where we find two people in the streets of Lahore, one American, and the other a Pakistani. The narrator of the novel Changhez, starts his dramatic monologue with an American man who sits like a hostage, silently listening to his story. He talks with pride about his Princeton Class of 2001 and his job at Underwood Samson & Company. America also opened to him the opportunity of being one among the busy New Yorkers and to lead a decent life there. He also fell in love with Erica but was unfortunate in remaining as her pseudo lover, as she was still in love with her long dead boyfriend Chris.
Changez was among the numerous Muslim immigrants who were questioned, interrogated, detained regarding security issues for long hours post the 9/11 attacks. The incessant question, “What is the purpose of your trip to the United States?” followed by long nagging exchanges on the same issue was a harrowing experience for him. However, we find him doing the same with the American in Lahore:
Perhaps you have drawn certain conclusions from my appearance, my lustrous beard; …Besides, I wish to hear more of you: what brings you to Lahore, what company you work for, et cetera, et cetera. (76)
Hamid leads us to believe initially that Changez is an innocent victim of unjustified international politics that sees nothing in him except that he is a Muslim. Neither education in an American university,nor his job in one of the most influential companies was taken into consideration before the fact that he was a muslim. He says in one of the paragraphs:
Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film, about the Second World War; I, a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black and white. What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me – a time of unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not know (115)
Changez begins to sport a beard, and nevertheless start believing that his nation, his community, and he himself has a distinct identity which he feels should not be subsumed by the dictates of others. His beard makes him appear strange and the centre of gossip and unwanted attention in his office, the streets in USA. Yet he chooses to keep the beard intact possibly as a sign of resistance, of protest against the undue suspicion and harassment on the basis of belonging to a different religion. Even his own mother advices him when he was about to return to New York that, “Do not forget to shave before you go”, despite the fact that his father and brother both had beards in Pakistan. In New York also, he was advised the same way by Jim, who said:
Listen kid, some people around here think you’re looking kind of shabby. The beard and all…Besides, I know it must be tough for you with what’s going on in Pakistan. (137)
Changez is shown as a person who is unable to achieve either his love or his social position in America. It is as if the nation doesn’t allow him the scope of becoming the real person that he is, or practice his religious sentiments, and show some amount of sympathy for his motherland. His journey back to Pakistan is a kind of returning back to his ‘roots’. Although his return has both the sense of rejection and defiance, Changez is not able to erase the subtle liking that he has for New York.
Also, there is a slight indication of the fact that Changez might not be a mere victim, innocent and helpless. He takes up a job in Lahore, get noticed for otherwise radical activities, receives official warnings, and the way he talks with the American, his gestures are laden with underlying suggestions that he might not be what he overtly appears – an innocent victim of American bias and exploitation.
Hamid perhaps tries to understand whether a moment in history is so important that it actually subsumes the life of an individual into the life of the collective. He questions the constant flux that is one of the most endangering aspects of human integrity and brings the issue of layered identities. However he ends with a tinge of optimism, with the hope of a possibility when there would be less suspicion in one’s eye for the other. Changez points out at the universal fear we have for each other and says,
It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all under-cover assassins. (183)
Terrains and Tropes 