NICK'S NOTES
When I read a novel that I expect to discuss in a book club meeting several months down the road, I jot down all the characters and make chapter summaries. Here are my notes for Khaled Hosseini's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, to be released on May 22nd, and for Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
by Khaled Hosseini
CHARACTERS
3 MARIAM, illegitimate daughter of Jalil and Nana, born in 1959, 4, lives in a kolba outside the village of Gul Daman
3 JALIL KHAN, Mariam’s father, one of Herat’s wealthiest men, with three wives and nine legitimate children, 5, 29
3 NANA, Mariam’s mother, a Gul Daman stone carver’s daughter, once the housekeeper of Jalil Khan until she became pregnant
9 KHADIJA, Jalil’s first wife
9 MUHSIN, Jalil’s eldest son by Khadija, Mariam’s half-brother
10 FARHAD, one of Jalil’s sons, Mariam’s half-brother
13 RAMIN, Mariam’s half-brother
15 HABIB KHAN, Gul Daman’s leader, the village arbab
15 BIBI JO, a round old woman, friend of Nana’s
15 MULLAH FAIZULLAH, the elderly village Koran tutor
16 HAMZA, son of Mullah Faizullah, a few years older than Mariam
17 SAIDEH, one of Jalil’s daughters, age fifteen, 44
17 NAHEED, one of Jalil’s daughters, age fifteen, 44
21 NARGIS, Jalil’s youngest wife
27 AFSOON, Jalil’s red-headed second wife, mother of Niloufar, 41
30 woman with a tattoo, 37
37 NILOUFAR, Mariam’s half-sister, age eight, 38, daughter of Afsoon, 41
37 ATIEH
43 RASHEED, Pashtun suitor for Mariam, one of the best shoemakers in Kabul
60 FARIBA, the wife of Rasheed’s neighbor in Kabul, 63, nine years later, 110-111
60 NOOR, her son, age ten
60 AHMAD, her son, age thirteen
60 HAKIM, her husband, a teacher in Deh-Mazang, 98, later a worker at Kabul’s gigantic bread factory
88 TARIQ WALIZAI, a little boy new to Deh-Mazang, age eleven, 105, lost a leg to a land mine at age five, 113, as a young man, 150-151
92 WAJMA, the elderly midwife
93 LAILA, Fariba’s new daughter
100 KHALA RANGMAAL, real name SHANZAI, Laila’s modern-thinking teacher, seen years later visiting her children at the orphanage, 286
102 GITI, age nine
102 HASINA, age twelve
105 KHADIM, age eleven, son of a butcher
108 AZITA, the rugmaker’s daughter
108 ANAHITA
113 NILA, Giti’s mother, a seamstress
149 SABIR, age eighteen, Giti’s boyfriend, goalkeeper on her brother’s soccer team
182 ABDUL SHARIF, a businessman who owns clothing stores who was in a special hospital unit with Tariq
184 NADIA, Abdul Sharif’s wife
212 AZIZA, Laila’s daughter, secretly fathered by Tariq, grudgingly raised by Rasheed until sent to an orphanage
233 WAKIL, the man in the bus station, 234
236 OFFICER RAHMAN at the police station, 237-239
262 ZALMAI, son of Laila and Rasheed
281 ZAMAN, the orphanage director
296 ALYONA, Tariq’s goat, 335
302 SALIM, a Pakistani in prison with Tariq, former field hockey player
302 SAYEED, Salim’s brother, owner of a small hotel in Murree, Tariq’s employer
303 ADIBA, matronly old cook at Sayeed’s hotel, 335
322 NAGHMA, a short girl in the Walayat women’s prison cell with Mariam, 326
351 HAMZA, Mullah Faizullah’s son in the village of Gul Daman
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
88 MIR AKBAR KHYBER, prominent communist murdered in April ‘78
88 DAOUD KHAN, president of Afghanistan
89 TARAKI, a leader in the Afghan communist party
91 ABDUL QADER, Air Force colonel
101 NAJIBULLAH, latest communist president, once head of the Afghan secret police, 138, 140, 144, a puppet regime, 207, tortured and hung, 247
108 AHMAD SHAH MASSOUD, Tajik commander leading the jihad, 145, 150, 154, 206, leading the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, 278
144 DOSTUM, flamboyant, unpredictableUzbek commander, 207, 221, switches sides, 226
144 GULBUDDIN HEKMATYAR, a Pashtun who studied engineering, 154, launches rockets at Massoud, 160, armed by American CIA, 189, 206, 213, 221, 226
144 RABBANI, Tajik leader who once taught Islam at Kabul University, 148, elected president, 154
144 SAYYAF, a Pashtun with Arab connections, 159, 206
144 ABDUL ALI MAZARI, an Hazara with strong Shi’a ties to Iran
148 SIBGHATULLAH MOJADIDI
244 MULLAH OMAR, one-eyed recluse, leader of the Taliban
348 ISMAIL KHAN, Herat’s feudal-style warlord
CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER OUTLINE
PART ONE
1. At the age of five, Mariam first learns that she is illegitimate.
2. A jinn enters Nana as epilepsy. Nana and Jalil’s conflicting accounts of Mariam’s birth and childhood.
3. Nana refuses Mullah Faizullah’s persuasion that Mariam should go to school like Jalil’s legitimate daughters.
4. Jalil’s visits on Thursdays to Nana’s kolba to see Mariam. He gives her a pendant. Her longing to live with him.
5. Against Nana’s objections, fifteen-year-old Mariam asks Jalil to see the cartoon Pinocchio with her brothers and sisters for her birthday. Mariam walks into Herat searching for her father, is refused entrance to his house, and sleeps on the street. She sees her father’s face. She returns home to find Nana has hanged herself.
6. Mariam moves into Jalil’s house. Visits from her eight-year-old half-sister Niloufar and from old Mullah Faizullah.
7. The wives summon Mariam downstairs to tell her she’ll be married to Rasheed, a widowed elderly shoemaker in Kabul.
8. The brief wedding ceremony of Mariam and Rasheed. Mariam shuns Jalil’s goodbyes as she leaves on the bus for Kabul.
9. Rasheed takes her to his home, and shows her to her private bedroom.
10. Rasheed orders Mariam to unpack her suitcase, leave her room, and begin her duties as a wife. At the communal tandoor to bake her bread, Mariam meets Fariba but panicks in the crowd. She prepares daal. Rasheed gives her a burqa.
11. Mariam wears her burqa. A walk together through Kabul. Rasheed’s gift of the shawl. Mariam loses her virginity.
12. Ramadan, 1974. Cleaning the house after Eid visitors, Mariam discovers in Rasheed’s room pornography and a gun, and photos of his first wife and drowned son, Yunus.
13. The season’s first snowfall. Rasheed counting on Mariam’s baby being a boy. Mariam bleeds in the bathhouse, and loses her baby.
14. Mariam grieves over her lost baby, and performs a burial service in the yard.
15. Mir Akbar Khyber is murdered. Military planes roar overhead. Fariba has a baby daughter, Laila. Rasheed makes Mariam chew pebbles.
PART TWO
16. Nine years later, in 1987. Hakim and Fariba fight. Laila’s teacher and her girlfriends at school, Giti and Hasina.
17. Khadim squirts urine in Laila’s hairf. Laila goes into her mother’s room. The blue Benz with a Heart license outside the shoemaker Rasheed’s house.
18. Tariq returns from his uncle’s. Laila has lunch with Tariq’s family. Laila makes dinner for Babi. Her father stresses the value of education for women.
19. Noor and Ahmad reported killed. The funeral service, or fatiha, for Laila’s brothers.
20. Mammy’s ailments and grieving. Laila takes care of the house, and fears Fariba may take her own life.
21. Laila, Hakim and Tariq take a day trip to see the Red City and climb up the two enormous Buddhas in the cliff. Hakim’s dreams, and commitment to Fariba.
22. In 1989, Laila, her parents, and Hasina watch the last Soviet convoys leave Kabul. In the movie theater, Laila and Tariq scorn marriage and resist a kiss.
23. Three years pass. 1992. Laila turns fourteen. Mammy warns her that being seen with sixteen-year-old Tariq could damage her reputation. Mammy’s yard party to celebrate Najibullah’s surrender. Giti’s new boyfriend, Sabir. Tariq lures Laila down an alley. A fight in the yard. Political unrest breaks out.
24. The whistling of falling bombs. Laila kisses Tariq under the pear tree. The streets unsafe, Babi takes over Laila’s education. Giti is kissed by a stray rocket.
25. Tariq tells her he’s leaving Afghanistan. He wants to marry Laila, but she can’t leave her parents behind. She makes Tariq leave.
26. Fariba agrees to leave Kabul. The bullet through the gate by Laila’s head. Laila’s dream of the singing sand. What to sell, what to take. While piling their belongings outside, a missile strikes, killing Babi and seriously injuring Laila.
PART THREE
27. Mariam. Injured Laila taken care of by her neighbor, Rasheed, who dug her out from beneath the rubble. Three soldier boys occupying Tariq’s house killed by a morning rocket. Abdul Sharif arrives to speak with Laila.
28. Laila. Abdul Sharif, a businessman who owns clothing stores, comes to tell Laila that he met Tariq in a special unit at the hospital, after a stray rocket hit the truck he was in, taking Tariq’s other leg; after 3 weeks in the hospital, he dies.
29. Mariam. Rasheed’s manners have improved since Laila moved in. Mariam objects when she realizes Rasheed is courting her. Laila agrees to become Rasheed’s second wife.
30. Laila. Laila realizes she’s pregnant. Marriage is the only way she can save Tariq’s baby, now six weeks inside her. On her marriage night, she cuts her finger to stain the sheet with blood.
31. Mariam. Awkwardness between Mariam, now age 33, and Laila. Forced dinners together. Laila not allowed to leave the house without him. The two wives first attempt to set their terms with each other, a failure.
32. Laila. Wajma the midwife reveals that Rasheed was drunk the day his son drowned. Rasheed prays for a boy. Laila feels trapped. Laila and Mariam have a shouting fight in the kitchen. The baby’s first kick.
33. Mariam. Spring of ’93. Laila gives birth to a girl. Rasheed’s mounting hostility to Laila and baby Aziza. When Laila refuses Rasheed in bed, he threatens to bet Mariam, and Laila stops him. The baby grips Mariam’s finger.
34. Laila. Rasheed asks suspiciously about Tariq. Laila begins stealing money from Rasheed’s wallet, planning on running away. Laila thanks Mariam for her gift of baby clothes. The two wives share chai together, enemies no longer.
35. Mariam. Aziza’s love for Mariam. In January ’94 the fighting escalates. Laila braids Mariam’s hair, and the two exchange secrets. Mariam’s change of heart.
36. Laila. Spring of ’94. After selling her wedding ring, the moment Rasheed leaves for work, Laila and Mariam take Aziza in a taxi, running away. At the Lahore Gate bus station, they ask a stranger, Wakil, to be the required male relative traveling with them, but he betrays them. At the police station, Officer Rahman refuses Laila’s plea for compassion. Returned home, they are separately beaten by Rasheed, separately imprisoned, and nearly starved to death.
37. Mariam. September of ’96. Arrival of the Taliban in Kabul. The torture and hanging of Najibullah and his brother. The flyer of the new Shari’a laws.
38. Laila. Widespread Taliban destruction. Rasheed’s threats regarding Taliban punishments for women. Laila finds she’s pregnant, and tries to summon the courage to abort it with a bicycle spoke, but can’t bring herself to kill.
39. Mariam. September ’97. The hospital refuses to treat women. The mob of waiting women at Rabia Balkhi, the one hospital for women. Laila needs a caesarian, but there’s no anaesthetic.
40. Laila. Fall ’99. Mariam is forty, her new son Zalmai is two. Zalmai worships his father, goes to the shoe shop with him, and is spoiled by him. Rasheed brings home a Taliban-forbidden television and VCR for Zalmai. Rasheed demands that Aziza beg for money to pay his debts. Laila hits him, and he sticks the barrel of his gun in her mouth. Afraid of Taliban raids, Laila and Mariam bury the television in the yard.
41. Mariam. Summer of 2000, third year of drought. Pirated videos cause Titanic fever to sweep Kabul. A nearby fire destroy’s Rasheed’s shoe shop. He loses two jobs, is brutal at home. His family of five skip meals, go hungry, lose weight. Mariam’s call to Jalil for help reveals that her father was dying back in ’87 when he drove all the way to Kabul to knock on her door, which she would not open.
42. Laila. April ’01. Laila is 23. The Taliban blow up the giant stone Buddhas. Aziza taken to an orphanage, filled with children of women forbidden by the Taliban to work. Soon Rasheed refuses to accompany Laila to the orphanage. She’s repeatedly beaten and turned back by the Taliban. Rasheed now a doorman at the Intercontinental Hotel. Waiting at their front door is Tariq.
43. Mariam. Zalmai’s agitation around Tariq, a screaming fit over his ball.
44. Laila. Man publicly flogged for painting flamingoes. Tariq is 25, bearded, working in a small hotel in Murree, a summer retreat in Pakistan, after staying in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp. Tariq’s story of being arrested for transporting a coat with hashish sewn in the lining. Zalmai tells his father at the dinner table that Laila has a new man friend with a limp.
45. Mariam. Rasheed flogs Laila with a belt until Mariam stops him. He’s strangling Laila when Mariam hits him with the shovel.
46. Laila. The two wives drag Rasheed’s body out to the toolshed. Mariam’s dream of the future. Laila says Zalmai’s night prayers with him instead of the boy’s father. Mariam insists on turning herself in to the police, rather than have Laila and Tariq live the rest of their lives running. Before Laila goes to get Aziza, she and Mariam say goodbye.
47. Mariam. In the Walayat women’s prison. The dying judge exonerates his Shari’a-based death sentence. Mariam talks with the young Talib in the back of the truck taking her to Ghazi Stadium, where she kneels and is executed.
PART FOUR
48. Tariq and Laila marry the day they arrive in Murree. Laila falling asleep with Tariq, holding hands. Laila and the two children move into Murree. Aziza’s nightmares, Laila’s dreams.
49. The assassination of Massoud. 9/11 and the declaration of war against Afghanistan. Laila and Tariq have their first quarrel as husband and wife.
50. Laila feels a need to return to Afghanistan. The farewell trip to Herat. The taxi driver’s story. Laila visits Hamza, Mullah Faizullah’s son, in the village of Gul Daman, and he takes her to see Mariam’s kolba where she grew up. Hamza gives Laila a locked box given by Jalil Khan to his father, Mullah Faizullah. It contains the video of Pinocchio, and a letter from Jalil begging Mariam’s forgiveness.
51. April ’03. Rain ends the drought. Zalmai is almost six, Aziza ten. Laila and the children sprayed by a Land Cruiser while waiting at the bus stop. Laila has used Mariam’s money for the orphanage, where she now teaches and Tariq works. Laila is expecting a third child; if a girl, her name has been chosen.
PAGE REFERENCES AND QUOTATIONS
7 “…a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman,” 323
49 flash-forward 27 years
71 the year is 1974
97 the year is 1987
172 the book’s title comes from a poem by Saib-e-Tabrizi
274 explanation of the blue Benz seen in Chapter 17
290 Titanic City
315 Mariam’s dream of the future
350 “…every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief.”
*
THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamid
Setting
A tea shop in the Old Anarkali district of Lahore, Pakistan
Names
6 CHANGEZ, narrator, age 22 (37), 2001 Pakistani graduate of Princeton, from Lahore (7), had among the top exam results in Pakistan, varsity soccer player (4), spent four and a half years in America (3), from a family of working people and professionals (10), held down three on-campus jobs (11), with controlled aggression from his soccer days (41)
5 WAITER, burly, intimidating, but irreproachably polite fellow, 108
6 JIM, the Underwood Samson interviewer at the Nassau Inn, judgmental eyes (7), the first guy in his family to go to college (9), the managing director (42), male nudes in his house (119)
17 ERICA, the love the narrator left behind, first met in Athens the summer after graduation, sees something broken in her eyes (52)
17 CHUCK, the narrator’s friend, an Ivy Princetonian from the soccer team
18 MIKE, Chuck’s friend, a competitor for Erica
26 CHRIS, Erica’s boyfriend who died of lung cancer
34 SHERMAN, a vice president
35 WAINWRIGHT, one of the six new trainees at Underwood Samson, with a penchant for quoting lines from popular cinema (38), a kindred spirit at the office (40), genial, irreverent, almost universally well-liked (41)
39 JENAAB, the man behind the counter at the Pak-Punjab Deli
141 JUAN BAUTISTA, chief of the Chilean publishing company
Notes and References
5 UNDERWOOD SAMSON and Company – a valuation firm in New York
53 alcohol’s illegality in Pakistan is like marijuana’s in the U.S.
65 Americans as “members of the officer class of global business”
79 American flags after 9/11
98 “Focus on the fundamentals,” 116
101 Pakistan is “the world’s sixth most populous country”
101 “Here we are not squeamish when it comes to facing the consequences of our desire.”
115 “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.”
151 JANISSARIES: Christian boys captured by the Ottomans in childhood and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, ferocious and utterly loyal, 157
167 “…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. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums…”
174 “…it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship…”
178 TERRORISM: “…the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers.”
183 “…you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.”
Clues to THE AMERICAN
1 “…you were looking for something…”
1 “…you seemed to be on a mission…”
2 “…hair, short-cropped…”
2 “expansive chest…of a man who bench-presses regularly…”
2-3 sits with his back to the wall, doesn’t remove his jacket
6 “…the look of a seasoned army officer.”
22 distracted by a man with a long beard who is staring at him
26 his wary gaze continues to seek out the old man with the long beard
31 he’s ill at ease, frequently and purposefully glancing about
60 leaps to his feet when the lights of the market go out, over-reacting to the blackout
60 his hand goes into his jacket
64 the nature of his business in Pakistan is never revealed
75 “…for we hae not met before, and yet you seem to know at least something about me.”
77 “…your demeanor all but precludes the possibility that you are a tourist wandering aimlessly through this part of the world…”
92 “But tonight, as I think we both understand, is a night of some importance.”
138 “…a bulge manifests itself through the lightweight fabric of your suit, precisely at that point…where the undercover security agents...tend to favor wearing an armpit holster for their sidearm.”
Gay References
16 “Tell me, sir, have you left behind a love – male or female, I do not presume to know your preference, although the intensity of your gaze suggests the latter – in your homeland?”
33 “…the coincidence of crossing Fifth Avenue during a parade and hearing, from loudspeakers mounted on the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Association float, a song to which I had danced at my cousin’s wedding.”
48 “Indeed, no one seemed to take much notice of me at all, save for a gay gentleman who politely offered me an invitational smile.”
71 “…Jim sat with his arm around the back of my chair in a way that made me feel – quite literally – as though he had taken me under his wing.”
119 “…and the walls featured impressive and forceful works of art, including, I realized, a not insignificant number of male nudes.”
119 “Is your family not at home? He turned to me – visibly amused – and said, “I’m not married.”
175 “Once she even asked me with visible nervousness if I was not, by any chance, gay.”
Chapter-by-Chapter Plot Outline
1. When he finds an American searching for a good place to get tea, the narrator suggests his favorite establishment. Though he now has a beard, the narrator has worked in New York and attended Princeton, where he excelled. Eight Princeton graduates each year selected for interviews with Underwood Samson. Jim, the interviewer at the Nassau Inn, confides in the narrator, Changez, that he also had gone through Princeton with a financial struggle. The narrator’s family of professionals all work. Jim tests Changez with a business case involving instantaneous travel, and makes him an offer with one week to decide. The narrator pours the listener another cup.
2. Girl students from the National College of Arts. Narrator’s first sight of Erica, on a student summer holiday in Greece. Chuck’s friend, Mike, moves in on her. The next morning at breakfast Changez and Erica have their first conversation. The impudence of his wealthy young American companions. Erica goes topless on the beach and catches Changez staring at her. A swim together. Her man’s shirt belonged to Chris, her boyfriend who died last year of cancer. Changez writes her name in Urdu. His joke about wanting to be “the dictator of an Islamic republic with nuclear capability” falls flat. Erica’s novelist aspirations. The American types a text message into his mobile phone.
3. The gate of Old Anarkali about to close, turning the market into a pedestrian-only piazza. Changez felt he immediately became a New Yorker. First day reporting to Underwood Samson on the 41st and 42nd floors of a skyscraper. Four weeks of seminars and training: initiation to the realm of high finance: an expense account, a company credit card. Bonding with Wainwright. The annual summer party at Jim’s house in the Hamptons. At the end of the analyst training program, Changez comes in first.
4. The scar on Changez’s forearm caused by melted wax spilling from a candle during a rolling blackout in childhood. Decorative lights turned on over the market. His dinner with Erica’s family in their penthouse on the Upper East Side. Erica’s novella manuscript in its envelope to send to an agent. Sketch by her dead boyfriend Chris on the wall of her bedroom. Erica’s father’s comment on fundamentalism. Erica takes Changez to a private chic party in Chelsea. Picnic lunch with Erica in Central Park a week before Changes leaves for Manila. Her painful recovery from the death of Chris.
5. Bats as successful urban dwellers. His first Underwood Samson assignment: Manila, to value a recorded-music business. While in a limousine, a prolonged glare of hatred from the driver of a jeepney. Pakistani dating restrictions result in the constant denial of gratification. Changez is a shark, says Jim, who was “dirt poor” in his childhood. The last evening in Manila: the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapse. Changez smiles that someone has brought America to its knees. Trapped in Manila, flights cancelled, searched and suspected by inspectors when he does board a plane. Changez tries to get the American to speak.
6. The smells of jasmine and grilling meat. The U.S. flag is suddenly everywhere in New York. He meets with Erica after a six-week separation. His aunt who went mad when her air force pilot husband of three months died. Their night walk leads to his building, and Erica asks to see the fourth-floor walkup where he lives, falls asleep on his bed, and leaves in the morning while Changez sleeps on the floor. He becomes Erica’s official escort in New York society. To celebrate her getting an agent for her novella, Erica suggests a magnum of champagne at his apartment. She shows him her bruise from tae kwon do practice. She doesn’t respond or resist when he undresses her. He asks to hear the entire story of her love with Chris.
7. His blinkers blinding him to portents of coming disaster. America’s self-righteous rage. Jim offers Changez another assignment: valuing an ailing cable operator in New Jersey, cutting costs and employees. With Jim one night when Changez’s tires are slashed. Morally troubled by eliminating older workers. Fury watching a television newscast of American troops in Afghanistan. For the first time late for work. Changez espouses the past grandeur of Pakistan to the American. Several days later, Erica is diminished from going through a bad patch. She tries to warn Changez away from her. They make love, pretending Changez is Chris.
8. The waiter recites the menu. Two weeks later, Erica finally responds to his calls. Erica’s mother has a chat with Changez. Erica tells him she can’t write anymore. An employee in the parking lot says, “Fucking Arab.” Changez faces him with a tire iron. Jim invites Changez up to his fashionable TriBeCa loft for tuna steaks, and asks him if his Pakistani side is bothering him. Again Changez is ranked number one of the six new analysts. He flies back to Lahore at Christmastime. Their food arrives.
9. Without cutlery, they eat with their hands. That winter he sees Lahore with American eyes. His home smacks of lowliness. His brother ruffles his hair. The possibility of war with India. Though he wants to stay longer, his parents insist he leave. His mother urges him to shave off his beard, he doesn’t, and it causes consternation in the office back home. Wainwright’s warning. After six weeks, he sends Erica the longest email ever. He goes to visit Erica in the clinic where she’s recovering. The nurse explains that Erica is simply in love with someone else, even though he’s dead. Talking with Erica on the wooded grounds. His deterioration and negligence at the office. His new assignment: valuing a Chilean book publisher. Changez urges the American to have dessert.
10. The American appears to be wearing an armpit holster. Changez flies to Chile, but regrets coming. In Valparaiso he meets Juan-Bautista, the old chief of the publishing company whose owners want to sell. Changez is unable to concentrate. America’s failure to defend its ally, Pakistan. The vice-president assisting him grows increasingly irritated. Slowly Changez becomes more aware of what he’s doing to Juan-Bautista. Their brief conversation. “You seem very unlike your colleagues.” He goes to see Neruda’s house. Email to Erica. The pipes to his parents’ house rupture, so they can’t take showers. He wires them money while continuing to endanger his income at work. Juan-Bautista invites him for a lunch of sea bass in salt, and tells him about the janissaries. Changez as a modern-day janissary, servent of the American empire. He tells the vice-president he refuses to work any further. “…my days of focusing on fundamentals was done.” He boards a flight for New York.
11. The deserted market takes on an ominous edge. America’s conduct in the world, and constant interference. Changez reports for duty to Underwood Samson for the last time. Jim’s farewell, and last gesture of friendship. He walks to the East Village with his box of personal possessions. He phones his family. He goes to the clinic, but a nurse tells him Erica is gone. Her clothes were found neatly folded on a rocky bluff overlooking the Hudson River. Erica’s mother gives him a copy of Erica’s manuscript. Memory of he and Erica watching a firefly cross Fourteenth Street. He reads her novella, an adventure tale of a girl on an island who learns to make do. His final days in New York. He leaves his jacket on the curb, causing a security alert. They leave the market, where unsavory characters are lurking about.
12. As they leave, they’re being followed by the waiter. In Lahore, he constantly remembers Erica. He pays his dues to receive the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Three years later, his brother marries, and his mother begins to suggest he do the same A misfiring rickshaw exhaust sounds like the report of a pistol. Changez and the American pause; the workers walking behind them pause. Tensions between India and Pakistan increase. Changez tells him what he did to stop America: he got a job as a university lecturer in finance, advocated demonstrations labeled by the press anti-American. He becomes a mentor to politically-minded youths. His ability to take quick stock of a person. One of his students arrested for planning to assassinate a coordinator of American assistance to the rural poor, and he’s warned that America might send an emissary to intimidate him. Since then he’s been waiting, with a feeling that he’s being observed. The waiter gives him a nod of recognition as they approach the gates of the hotel, waving at Changez to detain the American.
Questions
1. What is the case presented for-or-against Changez by his own words – is he treacherous and dangerous, or is he sincere?
2. What effect does this type of direct-address framework have on the narrative? Is this an effective choice, or an annoying artifice?
3. Two plots are braided together in the novel – Changez’s love for Erica, and the effect of 9/11 on Changez’s life. Are they equally interesting? Are they balanced in impact? Do the two plots have any impact on each other?
4. What is Hamid’s goal with this ambiguous narrative? His conclusion is open-eneded and unresolved – is this a frustrating flaw?
5. The title of the novel can have two meanings. Underwood Samson stresses fundamentals, too. Which meaning applies to Changez?
The Dramatic Monologue
Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, like Albert Camus’ The Fall, are dramatic monologues, a short theatrical first-person direct-address narrative. The form goes back to Robert Browning and ironic Victorian poetic monologues like “My Last Duchess,” where the narrator’s own words save or condemn him.
MY LAST DUCHESS
by Robert Browning
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my Lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ‘twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace – all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! But thanked
Somehow – I know not how – as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech – (which I have not) – to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark” – and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
E’en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
THE FALL
by Albert Camus
The Reluctant Fundamentalist was inspired by the third novel of Albert Camus, the short dramatic monologue, The Fall. It was published in 1956, and is less well-known than The Stranger and The Plague. It takes place in Amsterdam, in a small bar called confusingly Mexico City.
The story is being told directly to you; unlike Hamid, Camus makes no attempt to characterize the person being address: it’s the reader. The only other character is the owner of Mexico City, a menacing fellow referred to both as an ape and a primate, threatening and distrustful, who speaks nothing but Dutch.
The narrator is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, self-proclaimed judge-penitent (not until the novel’s end is this explained), formerly a well-known lawyer in Paris.
Opening Paragraph of THE FALL
“May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding? I fear you may not be able to make yourself understood by the worthy ape who presides over the fate of this establishment. In fact, he speaks nothing but Dutch. Unless you authorize me to plead your case, he will not guess that you want gin. There, I dare hope he understood me; that nod must mean that he yields to my arguments. He is taking steps; indeed, he is making haste with predent deliberation. You are lucky; he didn’t grunt. When he refuses to serve someone, he merely grunts. No one insists. Being master of one’s moods is the privilege of the larger animals. Now I shall withdraw, monsieur, happy to have been of help to you. Thank you; I’d accept if I were sure of not being a nuisance. You are too kind. Then I shall bring my glass over beside yours.”
Chapter-by-Chapter Outline of THE FALL
(1) The distrustful “worthy ape” who runs the Mexico City Bar speaks only Dutch. Jean-Baptiste Clamence introduces himself, and he and his guest share a gin before he accompanies him partway home. (pp. 3-16)
(2) Jean-Baptiste Clamence was a well-known lawyer in Paris, above reproach, who enjoyed helping widows, orphans, blind people; he’s famous for his courtesy, considering virtue its own reward. He discusses men who commit crimes to escape anonymity. Something of a superman, more intelligent than most men. The death and funeral of Clamence’s concierge. The concierge’s wife takes up with a baritone. One fateful autumn evening Clamence walks up the quays of the Left Bank and on the deserted bridge he’s about to light a cigarette when he’s startled by a laugh. (pp. 17-41)
(3) Though Clamence forgets about the laugh, he stops walking along the Paris quays and suffers from depression. Clamence feels out of sorts; he and his guest go walking along the canals. The reprehensibility of boasting about slavery, the need for domineering. Clamence sees himself as a charming Janus, a double face, bursting with vanity, with condescension toward others less intelligent. The Parisian man on the stalled motorcycle ahead of Clamence at the stop light, who becomes irritated with Clamence’s comments and hits him. Clamence broods over his failure to retaliate, his shaming in public without revenge. Clamence and his guest seek shelter from the rain. With women, Clamence was charming, had numerous techniques, always succeeded, and thus escaped from boredom. One of his women tells a third person Clamence’s deficiencies; he enslaves her to brutal love, and drops her. One night in November, at one in the morning, he passes a young woman on a French bridge over the Seine who jumps off after he passes. He hears several cries. He walks on, and doesn’t read the newspaper. (pp. 42-71)
(4) Amsterdam is a soggy hell. Clamence no longer has any friends. He dismisses taking his own life; no one would regret it much. He has the suspicion that maybe he’s not admirable, that maybe there’s something to judge in him. How criminals dodge judgment, placing blame. Clamence begins thinking of death daily, and feels a need to confess, praise has become unbearable. Defending the thief by exposing the crimes of the lawyer. (pp. 72-96)
(5) In a boat going at top speed through the fog, crossing the dead waters of the Zuider Zee. His search for the love promised in books, deviating even farther from virtue. Despairing of love and chastity, he tries debauchery until stopped by his liver. On an ocean liner, he mistakes a black speck at sea for a drowning person. The confinement of the little-ease, a Middle Ages invention, and the spitting cell. Jesus was implicated in the guilt of the Slaughter of the Innocents. The death of innocence in the face of judgment. (pp. 97-118)
(6) Clamence in bed with a fever when his guest arrives. His house contains bare necessities only, no books. During the Occupation, he was friendly to a dog that instead followed a German soldier. In a prison camp near Tripoli, a young Frenchman, the Du Guesclin type, names Clamence the pope of the wretched, to decide issues such as water allotment. His worry about bolting the door. The stolen painting by van Eyck, “The Just Judges,” was replaced by a forgery and the original was on the wall of the Mexico City bar, until put in Clamence’s house for safekeeping. The role of the judge-penitent: no excuses ever for anyone. Freedom is not a reward or a gift, but a chore. The comforts of slavery as the true freedom. Clamence practices his profession in Mexico City bar by indulging in public confession. The more he accuses himself, the more he has a right to judge, or provoke his listener into judging himself. It starts to snow. Clamence insists on going outside. His guest turns out to be a fellow lawyer. If only the young woman would throw herself into the water again…would he jump in and save them both? (pp. 119-147)