The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Author:Mohsin Hamid [Hamid, Mohsin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Psychological, Psychological Fiction, Social Science, Discrimination & Race Relations, Political, Contemporary, General, Romance, Self-Perception, Race Discrimination, Historical, Fiction, Pakistani Americans
ISBN: 9780156034029
Google: NCWmDUVaInAC
Amazon: B001VEHZZ2
Publisher: Harvest Books
Published: 2007-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

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.

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