A conversation with Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid doesn't give the impression of looking reluctant or fundamentalist in any context, not the first time I met him in the summer of 2001, in Brooklyn at Amitav Ghosh's house where he read from a draft of The Reluctant Fundamentalist --looking every bit the superbly confident McKinsey consultant that he was-- nor the second time in Lahore during basant 2005, when he said he was still working on the book and called it a US emigration novel, and now in Mumbai on a book tour, after that novel has been #4 on The New York Times Bestseller List. 

Excerpts from an interview with Rehan Ansari

Why do your protagonists, Changez in this novel and Daru in Moth Smoke, hold onto their class so much (when there is so much about it they don't like), and this issue stays with them through the novel.

MH. In our world where disparities are increasing, and at the same time visibility is increasing into the lives of other classes, someone in a village outside Lahore can look into the life of someone living in Beverly Hills, that theme of someone outside the candy store looking in, and hat as a source of enormous anger and resentment,  is interesting for me. One way of writing about that is to write about the real down and out of society, like Dickens. But I don't know what it is to be an illiterate, uneducated villager. So I always conduct that inquiry at the level of the middle class and its interaction with the upperclass, in a space where the middle class is insecure. If you look at the breeding ground of extremism the insecure middle class is that breeding ground. The extremists that we are talking about, Che Guevara for example, could have a job, are not totally crushed, they have a sense of pride. This sense of someone with pride, but one who is not capable of that degree of self awareness and irony to realize that yes I have a bad deal but I will not covet that next step above.

How did you prepare to write this, when we met at Amitav Ghosh's place in Brooklyn and you read out from a draft, this is the summer of 2001, was it a monologue then as well?

I remember I finished the first draft of the novel in July, 2001. When my agent saw it, he didn't really go for the smouldering anger towards America. Three months later of course, what I had imagined was considered mild. Of course the first attempted bombing of the WTC had already happened, so had the war in Iraq, the US embassy bombed in Africa, but at that time it seemed absurd that a fictional character in NYC could get so angry. Afterwards, of course it became way too understated. My first draft was not a monologue, it was a third person narration when you heard it. When Sept 11 happened I could not use that to say 'The End." So I wrote it in a first person narrative in an American accent, then I wrote it in the accent that we are taught in school, that British accent which becomes more proper as some people grow older and more insecure, like the guy who wears a cravat but drives a Suzuki (Maruti in the Indian context). In fact I think that Changez, as he is feeling insecure about his background and status in the US, his language becomes more 'proper.' See a lot of interesting things begin to happen when you are way deep into the novel. At first it was about this yuppie in America, like 'The Firm,' by John Grisham. It was a third of the way into the narration, and September 11 th happens that you start to become really uncomfortable with the narrator. My challenge was to bring that tension to the beginning of the novel, and so I had my narrator tell his story to an American in Pakistan and the suspense was around how they interact, with the American wondering are you a terrorist, are you a regular guy, and Changez wondering whether the American is CIA or tourist. This is   pretty much how Americans and Pakistanis look at each other--both sides wondering are you normal people, or a bunch of maniacs. I like the idea of the dramatic monologue because the other guy doesn't get to speak, he is captured. The monologue signals openly how biased it is. A first person narration is saying what it is saying, a monologue is doing that AND holding someone else quiet. If that sounds unfair well it is unfair. It reflects back how almost all news media works, you being the exception. The Indian view of Pakistan is an Indian speaking, and vice versa, and the same is true for the American view of the Muslim world, its an American speaking. In the American context where is the articulate, educated Muslim response?

How come your women characters are such complex people?

I want the characters in the novel, who are not the protagonist, to be complex, especially the women. In Moth Smoke, Mumtaz even tells part of the story. In RF the way we get to hear about Erica's story is through the story she has written, and when he reads it Changez gets no clues to her, and moreover, her story is not contained in him. It cant be contained in him but he keeps trying. She is her own person, bigger than his embrace. What is different between the two women is that Mumtaz comes out of almost a western feminist conception, although she is very desi, lots of desi women have told me that. .Erica though is almost the ideal of Eastern love. Like Juliet, Leila, her first love consumes her. That is the ultimate fana, the height of wondrous womanhood. Put in the context of a 21 st century American woman, it is mental illness, in need of medication and shock therapy. Both Erica and Mumtaz are unlike the people around them. How I do this is by imagining myself in their position: "If I were this woman what would it be like…" I grew up in a family with lots of women. My mother is one of seven sisters. I was surrounded by people suddenly getting their periods for the first time, or heartbreak, or braiding people's hair and all that stuff. People think that in Pakistan you don't have the company of women, I think it's the opposite.

What was the American reaction to your book?

I went on a 15 book tour there, went to Dallas Texas, if you can imagine. For a Pakistani writer to go to Dallas, is like an American writer going to Waziristan. They carry guns there and they don't like folks who don't like them. I walked into Dallas, like it was the Gunfight at the OK Corral. But the day I got there, the Dallas Morning News ran a really positive review, in which the guy said: look you will be horrified about what the character said but you can't half help feeling sympathetic. As for the 50 people who came for the reading, there was a remarkably engaged conversation. I was completely taken by surprise. I realize that we sometimes make exactly the same mistakes about America that we feel Americans make about Pakistan, or the Muslim world. I also got lucky with the timing of the book that in the US there is a growing consensus that the public has been misled by its elite and the media. That it has been a disastrous foreign policy. Many Americans feel that they want to know for themselves what is going on. If there is a voice that is honestly, unabashedly critical, then they are willing to take it on. Two years ago it might have been how dare you! I am happy about the media coverage there, it has hit a nerve. Mothsmoke was very critical towards Pakistan but very affectionate also, and I think that this book is very affectionate towards America. All of the American characters are pretty decent people, and all of them try and help Changez.

How is the success of this book changing your life? Is the thought of being a full time writer occurring to you?

I work part time at a consulting firm in London, and I live with my wife, who is from Lahore. But now maybe I could be a full time writer, but not in London. Its definitely occurring to me, I am confused by it. I really like the idea of taking as long as I do to write my book. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not the book I thought would work commercially. I wrote this book because I knew that I did not need to depend on this book for an income. But I like being out in the world, I have worked in NYC and London, and in Saudi Arabia. But I also think I should give it a shot to be a full time writer. A long time ago, while working at McKinsey,  I realized that making a lot of money is not my objective, being a socialite is also not, nor being famous. I like to write books that I like and have enough time to be with friends and family, that is a great life.

Is that how you like to write?

In a hole? I don't have a romance about writing like that, buying a montblanc pen and so on. I have done those things, and spent time in Tuscany and written shit. What I have realized is that I open my laptop in my bed when I wake up and I write well. Unromantic as that is that is how I write.

Is Lahore an important location for you?

Every three of four years I spend a year there. Probably due for another one. I started Moth Smoke when I was living there. In the third year of my writing that book, I was living there again. I chose Lahore as a location in the novel because it was looking at the world from there, and that's also why I chose New York as a location. I am not interested in 'location' as in the location of a writer who lives in a western suburb of a south asian city and writes about gritty realities. Some people do it well, but I am not in search of authenticity, I am a hybrid.