Stanford Daily interview with Mohsin Hamid on novel and personal experiences (April 23, 2007)
By Anna H.R. Khan
Two weeks ago I sat down with Mohsin Hamid, the unassuming and fascinatingly articulate author of “Moth smoke” and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” who was visiting Stanford to speak to students. We spoke of his novel, of Pakistan and of the many issues of this current day and age. The conversation moved from a professional plane to one of mutual understanding. Similar backgrounds brought forth issues that were previously untouched for fear of “not knowing enough.”
“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is Mohsin Hamid’s second novel. Using the dramatic monologue form, Hamid toys with problems of the current decade: nostalgia, terrorism, and media induced misconception. Through the pull between suspicion and bias comes to surface the story of Changez, a young man who ventures forth from his homeland of Lahore, Pakistan to study abroad at Princeton. Deeply talented, Changez lands a job with Underwood Samson soon after he graduates, but this perfect lifestyle starts to slip away in light of 9/11. Not only do the attacks induce change within the society, but they also allow this change to creep into a side love story. Full of rapid, often startling conversation, Hamid forces the reader to interact with the text. The novel transcends borders, as it allows the reader to delve into issues that survive past the last page. The reader walks away with some form of revelation, either of himself or of the often blurry reality of today’s world.
Anna Khan: The book only follows the voice of one character, Changez. Was it easier for you to write the book in monologue so that the American voice did not have a chance to speak?
Mohsin Hamid: I wrote seven drafts of this book – in a third person narrative, a first person narrative, an American voice, a Pakistani voice and a combination of both. The dramatic monologue form that I finally decided on allowed me to capture the way in which the world sees itself today, in a sense of mutual suspicion. It almost mimics the global media where so often you hear one side of the story. My novel is written in a form that takes the reverse side of the media; it hands the content over to the ‘reluctant fundamentalist.’ It is equally biased. The reader has to realize, though, that the novel is only a version of the truth. Numerous hints are given throughout the novel that Changez is not entirely a reliable character.
AK: How did you know that this draft was going to be the final one?
MH: It was like working on a puzzle. I had over 1,000 pages of manuscript and each one of them played a part in the final draft. I don’t know how I knew that this draft was going to be the final one. I guess stylistically it did what I wanted it to do. In a way I used formal English, slightly anachronistic, like the Queen’s English. It gave off an aura of uncertainty, like the character was insecure about something. One can also compare that to the religious aspect of the novel — it sounded like Changez, the main character, conveyed a Western concept of Islam — rigid, and vaguely menacing in its formality. Those effects stylistically were wonderful. It allowed me to play with the reader’s misconceptions.
AK: Your main character, Changez, is Pakistani and went to Princeton just like you did. He also worked in New York City for quite some time. Was this in some way an autobiographical novel?
MH: No. In me, there are both sides of the conversations — the American side and the Pakistani side. The novel as a whole deals with an issue that is important to me. I had much more of an American experience than Changez did; I spent half of my life in the United States.
AK: Quoting Changez, “Princeton made everything possible for me. But it did not, could not, make me forget such things as how much I enjoy the tea in this, the city of my birth...” Were there times where you felt that you had forgotten where you came from? You went to the same school I did, the Lahore American School, and I know personally that it can be suffocating when a school embraces a culture so different from the one surrounding it.
MH: Altogether, my parents have thirteen siblings. That means I have over two dozen cousins in Lahore, who were within three or four years of my age. A vast majority of my friends and cousins didn’t go to the Lahore American School (LAS). I think I got a much bigger slice of Lahore and so I didn’t feel as suffocated. When I go back to Lahore I don’t go back to my bubble of post-LAS. I go back to people who never thought of being anywhere else but Lahore.
AK: Quoting from a part of your novel, do you as an author and as an individual “feel solid”?
MH: Yes I do. I’m no longer grappling with the same issues that Changez is. Issues like, how should I behave in Pakistan? In America? Do I even have to behave differently? Do I marry a Pakistani girl? A foreign girl? Where should I live? I am married now and I live in London, which is halfway (haha). Because of the way I have lived my life, I can’t really look to a single place or a single group of people. It just has to be me. At my wedding, twenty friends from abroad flew over. There were desis (South-Asians) and non-desis at my wedding.
I guess the people that dance at your wedding speak volumes about the kind of crowd you surround yourself with. People like me are water lily people. We aren’t like wimpy pansies. For us it is possible to have roots and drift. You don’t have to be anchored in the soil but you can still have roots that help you pick up nutrients. What Changez doesn’t do is find that in-between place. In today’s world, more and more people are trying to find one part of themselves. You can’t long for a single past; it will make you inherently unstable.
AK: Quoting your novel, “You appear distracted, sir; those pretty girls from the National College of Arts have clearly recaptured your attention. Or are you watching that man, the one with the beard far longer than mine, who has stopped to stand beside them? You think he will scold them for the inappropriateness of their dress — their T-shirts and jeans? I suspect not: those girls seem comfortable in this area and are likely to come here often, while he looks out of place.”(Pg 22) Please comment on liberalism and its interaction with Pakistan being an Islamic Republic?
MH: What we call Islam is the Islam of the Saudi culture. If you go to a Pakistani village, all the women work. If they didn’t, people would starve. Pakistan is unlike Middle Eastern Countries; it is predominantly an agricultural society. In Pakistan, the government can’t really tell the people what to do because it doesn’t do much for the people. In Saudi Arabia, the government can because it owns all the oil and generates most of the revenue for the country.
Pakistan is incredibly diverse, and not many people understand that when they have only one interpretation of the country. The question of liberalism is not an easy one. What we need to understand are the dimensions of our diversity. If you turn on the television in Pakistan, there is QTV, Fashion TV. There is an urban vs. rural divide. You see women in jeans and in traditional dresses. There are many differences geographically in the five different provinces. While being a strong agricultural center, it also has big industrial belts. Even in terms of occupation, there has been diversity with the Aryans first, and then followed by the Mongols and the British. So if you ask me to comment on the interaction, I would have to say it’s very complex.
AK: The novel has been released in a decade of turmoil, not only in the West but also in Pakistan. The chief justice of the Supreme Court was fired and there have been countless threats from madrassas (religious schools). Do you think this is the brink of a revolution? Will fundamentalists take over a nation that is unstable in its governance? Is this novel as much a social critique as was “Moth Smoke,” your first novel?
MH: I’m not convinced that Pakistan is teetering on the brink of a revolution. Yes, there might be a restoration, but that is very different from a revolution. I actually wrote in support of the idea that President Pervez Musharraf needs to step down. The idea that one man can be chief of army staff and the President is not a part of the constitution, even though he may have started out with liberal inclinations. The idea of a revolution in Pakistan today is new; it is just a part of media frenzy. There is a conflict in the world today — a political conflict that is misunderstood in religious terms. Religious terms are used to dress up a political conflict. I think the idea of Pakistan being at the brink is invented to control Pakistan’s pragmatists, not utopians. They just want to do things the way they are doing things.
AK: The story of Erica was a very prominent part of the novel and certainly doesn’t seem completely one-dimensional. What is the parallel of Erica’s story?
MH: All authors hope that no character of theirs is one-dimensional! Erica’s nostalgia in the novel is one of the most important themes. What is nostalgia? It is a longing for the past, an innate part of the human condition. Nostalgia is not as prevalent when we are younger — we think we are farther from death and life seems to glow. But in a rapidly moving world, nostalgia becomes more tempting. Even in politics, Bush speaks of the “axes of evil” — that is a Second World War concept. When the social welfare state was established, it was a form of nostalgia. In my view of the world, nostalgia can be both a crippling feeling and one that makes you stronger. Erica’s affliction makes evident nostalgia’s multi-dimensional presence.
AK: The whole concept of the novel is based on a conversation between two men. Is it really believable that Changez can tell so much to another, a man he does not even know?
MH: The dramatic monologue has a fantastical element. It is a form that is playful. It allows you to bend reality in a way that tempts the reader with suspicion and disbelief. Can a conversation like this really happen? Of course not.
AK: Sometimes we write in the abstract not knowing exactly where the words are coming from. That kind of writing is starkly different from scenes that are composed largely of dialogue. Your writing seems to incorporate the abstract with the dialogue so well. Do you have any suggestions for aspiring writers?
MH: I took a lot of creative writing classes at Princeton and they are helpful to a certain extent. Rules are important in the beginning. After a certain point though, they are no longer helpful. In a world of “show, don’t tell,” Jane Austen doesn’t exist. It is still fantastic writing. Writing is like any form of art – music, jazz – you have to learn the scales, then you improvise.
AK: Why did you write this book?
MH: I wanted to figure some things out. I am in love with America and deeply angry with it, sort of like Changez. He is always aware of certain benefits that America hands over to him, benefits that are part of the American corporate culture. At the same time the culture doesn’t work for him. He becomes at once ashamed and proud of his background. It is a strange dichotomy. The novel implicates the audience; it holds up a mirror to what they are. In that process, the author establishes a conversation with the audience.
AK: The title of the novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” is important to the overall meaning. For me the feeling of reluctance was less of an uncertainty than fundamentalism was, for the character of Changez.
MH: Changez, in some ways, does act like a reluctant fundamentalist. He doesn’t want to leave America but has to. It is that reluctance which is fundamental and most direct. He works in a company that values other companies. He doesn’t believe that society should be governed with valuing economic fundamentals. It almost becomes an ethical issue. As he becomes more resistant to that, he becomes more and more reluctant.
AK: The ending was probably the most startling and frightful part of the novel. The reader expects something terrible to happen but is not given a definitive ending. The lack of a concrete ending leaves the reader hanging. Did you intend for it to be that way?
MH: The end product is exactly what I intended it to be. If an artist creates a painting, it is everything he/she intends it to be. Usually readers are hunting for answers and books can’t really give you the answer — the notion of the answer is actually wrong, there is a multiplicity of answers through which you become aware of your own biases. The audience becomes frightful of shadows. If an author shows even the slightest hint of something sinister, it becomes a puzzling ending. You have to understand that the novel is a conversation and the end of the novel is the end of the conversation. Do we know exactly what happens? No. The novel is like a conversation much like the world is in conversation. The expectation that a terrible thing is going to happen, speaks for the world today.
AK: That is so true. If we had all the answers, the state of the world would be very different. Personally, I felt a little abandoned by the ending. Maybe it is just because I haven’t read books that expect the reader to participate as much as the author has.
MH: All you get from me is black squiggles of ink on pulped wood. The novel is a mirror. Every part of it, including the ending is a part of the novel that occurs on the reader’s side of the divide. In the novel you are the director and the cinematographer. And because of that, to a certain extent, maybe you are a little bit abandoned. As an author, if you take the time out to read this book, I’m happy.
AK: How would you compare the reaction in London after the 7/11 attacks to the reaction in American after the 9/11 attacks? How would you compare your response to that reaction?
MH: The 9/11 attacks happened in an incredibly spectacular fashion. The two attacks are not equal events. When I talk about their reactions, I want to make sure that we’re not equating the two things. In Britain, people acted as if things were normal, that things would go on. In Britain, it seems like they are used to the concept of terrorism. They have dealt with groups like the IRA.
That’s very different from the American reaction. For the Americans, things will never be the same. Everybody should be very frightened. Here, the media has much more of an emphasis on scaring people — that factor is very endemic to American media. The people are being overly frightened about the wrong things. Terrorism is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. But forty thousand people die in car accidents yearly. Six thousand died in the war on terror. We have been made to be afraid, disproportionate to the risk. For Americans, this sense of fear has always been evident. Partly, it has to do with America’s history, the history of moving into new territory — the whole series of things. Whereas in Britain, people have been living in the same place, enduring different things. The place is less frightened. The War on Terror is a misnomer. It is a War on Fear.
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