Migration and identity are relevant topics in Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The plot evolves around Changez, a Pakistani migrant in America, who struggles between two identities and is torn between the clash of two different worlds. As a matter of fact, after 9/11 and the following invasion of Afghanistan, he starts to resent America and he feels a crippling sense of displacement. His disillusionment will lead him back to his native country.
In The Nature of Blood, Eva points out: "Home is a place where one feels a welcome" (Phillips, 2008:37). In this regard, it could be argued that it is only after the war waged by America against Afghanistan, that Changez start to reconsider his concept of home. As Adams (2010:42:15) states "It was an attack, as Changez perceives it, on Pakistani friends.[...] He sees America invasion of Afghanistan has an encouragement to powerfull India to invade his weaker neighbour Pakistan". In a certain way, he feels betrayed by the very nation he seems to have chosen as the emblem of his identity. Experiencing a strong sense of disenchantment with America, he thus decides to let his beard grow as a symbol of protest and of his "newly found Pakistani identity"(Olson,2011). When he happens to go back to Lahore to visit his family, he understands that he is probably serving the wrong nation. This belief becomes a certainty after his conversation with Juan Baptista thanks to whom he realized he is a "modern day jannisary, a servant of the American empire"(Hamid,2007:173). For this reason he finally decides to resign from Underwood Samson and to return to Lahore. Therefore after working in an American company with "focus on fundamental "as motto , he becomes a "reluctant fundamentalist" as the title of Hamid's work apparently suggests. It is in this last step of Changez's journey of self-discovery that is possible to observe the final acceptance of his Pakistani roots.
Michela Pezzini
The beginning of the protagonist's disillusionment coincide with his trip to Manila, in the Phillipines: it is here that he starts to second guess the foundations of the life he is building for himself in New York. One episode in particular triggers Changez's identity crisis: while stuck in traffic, sitting in a limousine with his American coworkers, he meets the eyes of a Filipino driving a jeepney and looking at him with manifest dislike.
Then one of my colleagues asked me a question [...] I looked at him - at his fair hair and light eyes, and, most of all, his oblivious immersion in the minutiae of our work - and thought, you are so foreign. I felt in that moment much closer to the Filipino driver than to him; I felt I was play-acting when in reality I ought to be making my way home [...] (Hamid, 77)
Changez's words are particularly evocative of the disembodied voice in The Nature of Blood who warns the African general against the dangers of his make-believe life in the West. The language, too, is similar - Othello is called a "figment of a Venetian imagination" (Phillips, 183) - and it points to performativity, "play acting" and simulation of identity. In both cases, cultural assimilation is equated to a self-constructed, and ultimately damaging and self-alienating, facade. The passage also resonates with the narrative that would want migrants to "go home", to return to their native countries, except that in this case it is reversed: it is the the Filipino driver who silentily reproaches Changez for leaving his country and assimilating alien values and codes of behaviour.
Martina Cincotto
Changez falls a victim to multiple and conflicting identities in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. To achieve his personal identity, he has to pass through certain stages of social identities. He is initially attracted by the charm of America but eventually he discovers his true identity. Compared with him may be Stephen in The Nature of Blood whose sense of self is tended to personal identity. Social identities are not salient to him. In order to achieve his true identity, he sets out on migration, leaves his family and joins the Haganah for a cause. At the end, he succeeds and achieves his personal identity in the form of a newly founded independent state of Israel. Thus, Changez is influenced first by the social norms and becomes an American. As given by Stuart Hall in his theory, Changez mingles with the American society and mirrors his real self which is a Pakistani. On the other hand, Stephen is not affected by social identities. He leaves his profession as a doctor and sets out in search of his personal identity.
Muhammad
Abdul Wahid
In addition, we also signal Robert Adams' analysis of the novel in this video where he comments on America's reaction after 9/11 as a determination to look back at a time of unquestioned dominance.
- ADAMS, R(2010) ‘Robert Adams on The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, video, Tvo Channel, 6 October[Online], viewed on 18 March 2014, Available at: source
- ANDERSON, C. (2010) ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Amid’[pdf], Insight Publications
- HAMID, M. (2007) ,The Reluctant Fundamentalist, London, England: Penguin Books OLSON, G (2011) ‘Identify and Identification in Moshin Amid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist’,[pdf], Summer 2011, Seminar on Terrorism at Justus Liebig University Giessen
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