The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

When I was in high school I encountered two literary works that continue to play in my imagination. The first was a short story that I read in French, have forgotten both the title and author, but vividly remember the story. It was a murder mystery told in the second person: YOU are there. The second was Strindberg's one-act play, "The Stronger." This play was the focus, and my performance as the speaker in this 20 minute long monologue was the outcome, of a six week intensive independent study of realism in theater. I went on to showcase that performance in a high school Thespian conference workshop at the University of New York - Albert - probably in 1972. The play features two women, the mistress and the wife of the same man, who meet by accident on Christmas Eve at a cafe. By the end of the play, the previously unaware wife is privy to her husband's affair. However, she never says a word. The only clues you get are the non-verbal ones visible to an audience and the words spoken by the mistress. The hanging question that lingers at the end of the play is which woman is "the stronger" and the audience can debate the answer forever.

Either or both of these works could be the template for The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. In this book, which makes the reader uncomfortable by its use of the second person right from the start, you hear the conversation between a Princeton educated expert in finance and a member of some American special operations team or an assassin. The man from Princeton is a Pakistani and the conversation occurs at a market restaurant in Lahore. The Pakistani man's name is Changez. Understanding French as I do makes me wonder if the author on purpose named his protagonist the imperative form of the verb to change. It is a demand in French: You, CHANGE! (now).

By disclosing his haunting love affair with a gorgeous, intelligent, fellow Princeton alumna, who is reaching out to him, exposing herself, wasting away, provoking but then rejecting his advances, and self-destructing because she cannot get past the death of her first lover, Changez describes his opinion of America. His metaphor depicts a culture whose core values are stuck in the past and overlook relational qualities of respect and self-respect for the good of the "fundamentals:" the bottom line no matter how much that implies a rejection of aesthetics, mercy, and honor.

It looked, at first, as though Changez had been changed by his American experience. He was the first in his class and the most successful new hire at a financial firm that evaluated new and troubled corporations around the world. After the 911 attacks on the United States, he was forced to reconsider whether indeed he had become a New Yorker or whether, at heart, he was a Pakistani. It was not a militant Islamic mind-set that caused him to quit his lucrative position and return to Lahore to teach finance and promote student activism in the university there. It was the combination of the post-911 fear-based rejection of his person in New York and the realization that another, more respectful and relational way to approach life were his fundamentals, not finance.

Whatever the reader's opinion of radical Islam, this book forces the American who eats across the table from Changez, at Changez's expense, to confront fear and the future. It is impossible not to experience some empathy, as the listener American, for the reluctant fundamentalist. But, at the end of the book, you don't know whether the American has suffered through the whole meal and walk through the threateningly lonely Lahore street in Changez's company only to pull the pistol out from its hidden shoulder harness to assassinate his host. Or, perhaps, the brawny Pakistanis in the shadows have designs against the life of the American who is merely pausing to get his business card out of his pocket before thanking Changez for a stimulating evening.

I think this book is destined to be a classic.