The Reluctant Fundamentalist Read online

  At first I did not believe him. I asked if he was serious, if there was not a second round for me to pass. “We’re a small firm,” he said. “We don’t waste time. Besides, I’m in charge of analyst recruiting. I don’t need another opinion.” I noticed his hand was still hanging in the air between us, and—fearful it might be withdrawn—I reached out and shook it. His grip was firm and seemed to communicate to me, in that moment, that Underwood Samson had the potential to transform my life as surely as it had transformed his, making my concerns about money and status things of the distant past.

  I walked back to my dormitory—Edwards Hall, it was called—later that same afternoon. The sky was a brilliant blue, so different from the orange, dusty sky above us today, and I felt something well up inside me, a sense of pride so strong that it made me lift my head and yell, as much to my own surprise as I am sure it was to the other students passing by: “Thank you, God!”

  Yes, it was exhilarating. That, in an admittedly long-winded fashion, is how I think, looking back, about Princeton. 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, steeped long enough to acquire a rich, dark color, and made creamy with fresh, full-fat milk. It is excellent, no? I see you have finished yours. Allow me to pour you another cup.

  2.

  DO YOU SEE those girls, walking there, in jeans speckled with paint? Yes, they are attractive. And how different they look from the women of that family sitting at the table beside ours, in their traditional dress. The National College of Arts is not far—it is, as a matter of fact, only around the corner—and its students often come here for a cup of tea, just as we are doing now. I see one in particular has caught your eye; she is indeed a beauty. Tell me, sir, have you left behind a love—male or female, I do not presume to know your preference, although the intensity of your gaze suggests the latter—in your homeland?

  Your shrug is inscrutable, but I will be more forthcoming. I did leave behind a love, and her name was Erica. We met the summer after we graduated, part of a group of Princetonians who had decided to holiday together in Greece. She and the others were members of the university’s most prestigious eating club, Ivy, and were traveling courtesy of gifts from their parents or dividends from their trust funds, which they were now of an age to access; I had cooked my own meals in the basement kitchen of my dormitory and was there thanks to my sign-on bonus from Underwood Samson. I was friendly with one of the Ivy men, Chuck, from my days on the soccer team, and was well-liked as an exotic acquaintance by some of the others, whom I had met through him.

  We assembled in Athens, having arrived on different flights, and when I first saw Erica, I could not prevent myself from offering to carry her backpack—so stunningly regal was she. Her hair was piled up like a tiara on her head, and her navel—ah, what a navel: made firm, I would later learn, by years of tae kwon do—was visible beneath a short T-shirt bearing an image of Chairman Mao. We were introduced, she smiled as she shook my hand—whether because she found me irresistibly refined or oddly anachronistic, I did not know—and then we headed off with the group to the port city of Piraeus.

  It was immediately apparent that I would not have, in my wooing of Erica, the field to myself. In fact, no sooner had we set sail on our ferry to the islands than did a young man—a tooth dangling on a string of leather in front of his bare, but meagerly muscled, chest—begin to strum his guitar and serenade her from across the deck. “What language is that?” she asked me, leaning close enough for her breath to tickle my ear. “English, I believe,” I replied after much concentration. “As a matter of fact, it is Bryan Adams, ‘Summer of ‘69.’” She laughed. “You’re right,” she said, politely lowering her voice to add, “Wow, he’s terrible!” I was inclined to agree, but now that I knew the troubadour posed no threat, I chose to maintain a magnanimous silence instead.

  A more serious challenge would come from Chuck’s good—and similarly monosyllabically monikered—friend Mike, who, the next day, as we sat in a restaurant overhanging the lip of the shattered volcano that is the island of Santorini, casually extended his arm along the back of Erica’s chair and remained in that position, which surely became uncomfortable, for the better part of an hour. Erica made no sign that she wished him to remove his arm, but I drew some consolation from the fact that throughout the dinner she listened intently when I spoke, smiling from time to time and training her green eyes upon me. Afterwards, however, on the walk to our pension, she and Mike trailed behind the rest of us, and that night I found it difficult to sleep.

  In the morning, I was relieved to see that she came down to breakfast before Mike—not with him—and I was also pleased that we appeared to be the first two of our group to be awake. She spread jam on a croissant, gave half to me, and said, “You know what I’d like to do?” I asked her what. “I’d like to stay here by myself,” she said, “rent a room on one of these islands and just write.” I told her she should, but she shook her head. “I wouldn’t last a week,” she said. “I’m not good at being alone. But you, on the other hand,” and here she tilted her head and crossed her arms, “I think you’d be fine.”

  I have never, to the best of my knowledge, had any fear of solitude, and so I shrugged in assent and said, by way of explanation, “When I was a child, there were eight of us, eight cousins, all in the same compound—a single boundary wall surrounded the plot of land my grandfather left to his sons, you see—and we had between us as many as three dogs and, for a time, a duck.” She laughed, and then she said, “So being alone was a luxury, huh?” I nodded. “You give off this strong sense of home,” she said. “You know that? This I’m-from-a-big-family vibe. It’s nice. It makes you feel solid.” I was pleased—even though I was not sure I fully understood—and said thank you for want of anything better to say. Then, hesitantly because I did not wish to be too forward, I asked, “And you, do you feel solid?”

  She considered this and said, with what I thought was a trace of sadness in her voice, “Sometimes, but no, not really.” Before I could respond we were joined by Chuck, and then by Mike, and the conversation turned to beaches and hangovers and the timings of ferries. But when I looked at Erica and she looked back at me, I felt we both understood that something had been exchanged between us, the first invitation to a friendship, perhaps, and so I waited patiently for an opportunity to resume our discussion.

  Such an opportunity would not come for quite some time—not until several days later, as a matter of fact. You might imagine I grew frustrated with the wait, but you must remember: I had never in my life had a vacation like this one. We rented motor scooters and purchased straw mats to spread on beaches of black volcanic sand, which the sun had made too hot for bare skin; we stayed in the rooms of quaint houses let out in the summertime by elderly couples to tourists; we ate grilled octopus and drank sparkling water and red wine. I had not before this been to Europe or even swum in the sea—Lahore is, as you know, a ninety-minute journey by air from the coast—and so I gave in to the pleasures of being among this wealthy young fellowship.

  I will admit that there were details which annoyed me. The ease with which they parted with money, for example, thinking nothing of the occasional—but not altogether infrequent—meal costing perhaps fifty dollars a head. Or their self-righteousness in dealing with those whom they had paid for a service. “But you told us,” they would say to Greeks twice their age, before insisting things be done their way. I, with my finite and depleting reserve of cash and my traditional sense of deference to one’s seniors, found myself wondering by what quirk of human history my companions—many of whom I would have regarded as upstarts in my own country, so devoid of refinement were they—were in a position to conduct themselves in the world as though they were its ruling class.

  But it may be that I am inclined to exaggerate these irritants in retrospect, knowing the course my relationship with your country would later take. Besides, the rest
of the group was for me mere background; in the foreground shimmered Erica, and observing her gave me enormous satisfaction. She had told me that she hated to be alone, and I came to notice that she rarely was. She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon magnetism. Documenting her effect on her habitat, a naturalist would likely have compared her to a lioness: strong, sleek, and invariably surrounded by her pride.

  Yet one got the sense that she existed internally at a degree of remove from those around her. Not that she was aloof; she was, in fact, friendly in disposition. But one felt that some part of her—and this, perhaps, was a not insubstantial component of her appeal—was out of reach, lost in thoughts unsaid. Suffice it to say that in relationship to the contemporary female icons of your country, she belonged more to the camp of Paltrow than to that of Spears.

  But my cultural reference has fallen on deaf ears! 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. Moreover, among the many rules that govern the bazaars of Lahore is this: if a woman is harassed by a man, she has the right to appeal to the brotherly instincts of the mob, and the mob is known to beat men who annoy their sisters. There, sir, you see? He has moved on. He was merely staring at something he found intriguing, much as you are, but in your case, of course, with considerably more discretion.

  As for myself, that summer in Greece with Erica, I tried not to stare. But towards the end of our holiday, on the island of Rhodes, I could not help myself. You have not been to Rhodes? You must go. It seemed to me unlike the other islands we had visited. Its cities were fortified, protected by ancient castles; they guarded against the Turks, much like the army and navy and air force of modern Greece, part of a wall against the East that still stands. How strange it was for me to think I grew up on the other side!

  But that is neither here nor there. I was telling you about the moment when I was forced to stare. We were lying on the beach, and many of the European women nearby were, as usual, sunbathing topless—a practice I wholeheartedly supported, but which the women among us Princetonians, unfortunately, had thus far failed to embrace—when I noticed Erica was untying the straps of her bikini. And then, as I watched, only an arm’s length away, she bared her breasts to the sun.

  A moment later—no, you are right: I am being dishonest; it was more than a moment—she turned her head to the side and saw me staring at her. A number of possible alternatives presented themselves: I could suddenly avert my eyes, thereby proving not only that I had been staring but that I was uncomfortable with her nudity; I could, after a brief pause, casually move my gaze away, as though the sight of her breasts had been the most natural thing in the world; I could keep staring, honestly communicating in this way my admiration for what she had revealed; or I could, through well-timed literary allusion, draw her attention to the fact that there was a passage in Mr. Palomar that captured perfectly my dilemma.

  But I did none of these things. Instead, I blushed and said, “Hello.” She smiled—with uncharacteristic shyness, it seemed to me—and replied, “Hi.” I nodded, tried to think of something else to say, failed, and said, “Hello,” again. As soon as I had done this, I wanted to disappear; I knew I sounded unbelievably foolish. She started to laugh, her small breasts bouncing, and said, “I’m going for a swim.” But then, as she walked away, she half-turned and added, “You want to come?”

  I followed her, watching the muscles of her lower back tense delicately to stabilize her spine. We reached the water; it was warm and perfectly clear, round pebbles and the flash of little fish visible below the surface. We slipped inside, she swam out into the bay with powerful strokes, and then she treaded water until I had caught up with her. For a time we were both silent and I felt our slippery legs graze each other as we churned the sea. “I don’t think,” she said finally, “I’ve ever met someone our age as polite as you.” “Polite?” I said, less than radiant with joy. She smiled. “I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “Not boring polite. Respectful polite. You give people their space. I really like that. It’s unusual.”

  We continued bobbing face to face, and I formed the impression that she was waiting for me to say something in reply, but words had abandoned me. Instead, my thoughts were engaged in a struggle to maintain a facial expression that would not appear idiotic. She turned and began to swim back to shore, keeping her head above water. I pulled alongside and—claiming victory at last over my cowering tongue—said, “Shall we return to town for a drink?” To which she replied, with a raised eyebrow and in an accent not normally her own, “I would be delighted to do so, sir.”

  On the beach she put on a shirt—a gentleman’s shirt, I still remember, blue and fraying at the tips of the collar—and stuffed her towel and bikini top into a bag. None of our companions wanted to join us, there being at least another hour of tan-inducing sunlight remaining in the day, and so we two made our way to the road and caught a bus. As we sat side by side, I could not help but notice that her bare leg was less than an inch from where I was resting my hand on my thigh.

  It is remarkable, I must say, how being in Pakistan heightens one’s sensitivity to the sight of a woman’s body. Do you not agree? That bearded man—who even now, sir, continues from time to time to attract your wary gaze—is himself unable to stop glancing over his shoulder at those girls, fifty yards away from him. Yet they are exposing only the flesh of the neck, the face, and the lower three-quarters of the arm! It is the effect of scarcity; one’s rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper. Moreover, once sensitized in this manner, one numbs only slowly, if at all; I had by the summer of my trip to Greece spent four years in America already—and had experienced all the intimacies college students commonly experience—but still I remained acutely aware of visible female skin.

  It was in order to prevent myself from impolitely focusing on Erica’s wheat-colored limbs that I asked her if her shirt had belonged to her father. “No,” she said, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger, “it was my boyfriend’s.” “Ah,” I said, “I did not know you had a boyfriend.” “He died last year,” she said. “His name was Chris.” I said I was sorry and told her that it was a fine shirt; Chris had had excellent taste. She agreed, saying that he had been quite the dandy, and rather vain even in hospital. His nurses had been charmed by him: he was a good-looking boy with what she described as an Old World appeal.

  Arriving in town, we found a café near the harbor with tables shaded by blue-and-white umbrellas. She ordered a beer; I did the same. “So what’s Pakistan like?” she asked. I told her Pakistan was many things, from seaside to desert to farmland stretched between rivers and canals; I told her that I had driven with my parents and my brother to China on the Karakoram Highway, passing along the bottoms of valleys higher than the tops of the Alps; I told her that alcohol was illegal for Muslims to buy and so I had a Christian bootlegger who delivered booze to my house in a Suzuki pickup. She listened to me speak with a series of smiles, as though she were sipping at my descriptions and finding them to her taste. Then she said, “You miss home.”

  I shrugged. I often did miss home, but in that moment I was content to be where I was. She took out her notebook—it was bound with soft, orange leather; I had previously seen her scribbling in it during moments of repose—and passing it to me with a pencil said, “What does your writing look like?” I said, “Urdu is similar to Arabic, but we have more letters.” She said, “Show me,” and so I did. “It’s beautiful,” she said, meeting my eyes. “What’s it mean?” “This is your name,” I replied, “and this, underneath, is mine.”

  We stayed at our table, talking as the sun set, and she told me about Chris.
They had grown up together—in facing apartments, children the same age with no siblings—and were best friends well before their first kiss, which happened when they were six but was not repeated until they were fifteen. He had a collection of European comic books with which they were obsessed, and they used to spend hours at home reading them and making their own: Chris drawing, Erica writing. They were both admitted to Princeton, but he had not come because he was diagnosed with lung cancer—he had had one cigarette, she said with a smile, but only the day after he received the results of his biopsy—and she had made sure she never had classes on a Friday so she could spend three days a week in New York with him. He died three years later, at the end of the spring semester of her junior year. “So I kind of miss home, too,” she said. “Except my home was a guy with long, skinny fingers.”

  Later that evening, when we went out for dinner with the group, Erica chose the seat opposite mine. Chuck made all of us laugh with a series of uncanny impersonations—my mannerisms were, in my opinion, somewhat exaggerated, but the others were spot on—and then he went around the table and asked each of us to reveal our dream for what we would most like to be. When my turn came, I said I hoped one day to be the dictator of an Islamic republic with nuclear capability; the others appeared shocked, and I was forced to explain that I had been joking. Erica alone smiled; she seemed to understand my sense of humor.

  Erica said that she wanted to be a novelist. Her creative thesis had been a work of long fiction that had won an award at Princeton; she intended to revise it for submission to literary agents and would see how they responded. Normally, Erica spoke little of herself, and tonight, when she did so, it was in a slightly lowered voice and with her eyes often on me. I felt—despite the presence of our companions, whose attention, as always, she managed to capture—that she was sharing with me an intimacy, and this feeling grew stronger when, after observing me struggle, she helped me separate the flesh from the bones of my fish without my having to ask.