Hamid and Changez, Brothers Through Circumstance

            I, like many other book readers, typically read the back covers of books before starting them. Usually, the back cover gives a brief summary of the book and a small biographical blurb about the author. So it comes as no surprise that The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows suit. This usually standard format gained a whole new meaning however, when I noticed something fascinating within the two blurbs. They mirrored each other. The summary says that Changez is from Pakistan. Hamid is also from Pakistan. It says that Changez studied abroad at Princeton. Hamid, summa cum laude at Princeton. These similarities continue , though more discreetly, for one would have to look up an extended biography of Moshin Hamid (which I did).

            Now the question is, what does it matter? I think that in order to proceed along this line of thought we need to dismiss the notion that writers are just blank faced creativity machines shrouded in anonymity. Hamid is far from anonymous, in fact, he probably seeks attention for his book. His book is written on a controversial topic with a dangerous tone towards terrorism. Because we know that Hamid and his character Changez are so similar in many ways, there is a high risk that Hamid's book maybe interpreted as his own declaration of anti-American sentiments, like those of Changez.

            My understanding of the book as a whole is enhanced in an irreversible way with the knowledge of Hamids fairly parallel life. Ethos is given in large doses to reader, knowing as they read the descriptions of Changez’s Princeton social life and his outsider-ness that they are probably reading Hamid’s personal account. Hamid gains my trust as an accurate and relevant storyteller for the particular story, and this makes it harder to place the story in a fictional light.

            It seems to me that this loss of “fantasy” in the story is something that it gains. Hamid’s goal in writing this book was to educate Americans on the lives of transplanted Muslim Americans, and show them the downward spiral, aided by anti-Muslim bigotry, that pushes those successful citizens toward hatred of the US. Hamid wanted to make the story as real as possible. I believe that in getting his point across it is necessary for the reader to see the story as very possible, and a very real threat. Hamid’s biography shows us that this story is not plucked from thin air, it is solid and made from a base of real experiences.

            Although further reading of an extended biography on Hamid reveals that he has some pretty drastic differences with the Changez near the end of the book, this seeming discrepancy adds another level of introspection to the book. By presenting the reader with both his own successful American story and Changez’s eventually disastrous one, Hamid is showing the reader that they could have so easily gone the other way. While Hamid reaped the benefits of an American education and capitalism, Changez was disheartened and eventually made to resent America. Hamid wants the readers to know that he could have easily lived Changez’s life. Had he been exposed to just a bit more Islamiphobia, to a bit more of the horrors of capitalism, or even met Juan Bautista, he could be in Pakistan right now lecturing on the poisonous nature of American society, inadvertently encouraging future terrorists, like Changez did. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not just a tale feared by Americans, but a tale feared by innocent Muslim/middle-eastern people everywhere, who are slowly poisoned by the tyrannical capitalist giant that is America.