The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I could not locate Erica in the rhythms or sounds of what she had written; it seemed a mistake, offered me no clues. It was so purposeful, so resolute in being precisely what it was that I was baffled. I was also powerfully affected. When I put down the manuscript, it was not with the conviction that Erica was either alive or dead. But I had begun to understand that she had chosen not to be part of my story; her own had proven too compelling, and she was—at that moment and in her own way—following it to its conclusion, passing through places I could not reach. I saw I had no option but to pursue my own preparations to leave.

  I would like to claim that my final days in New York passed in a state of enlightened calm; nothing could be further from the truth. I was an incoherent and emotional madman, flying off into rages and sinking into depressions. Sometimes I would lie in bed, thinking in circles, asking the same questions about why and where Erica had gone; sometimes I would find myself walking the streets, flaunting my beard as a provocation, craving conflict with anyone foolhardy enough to antagonize me. Affronts were everywhere; the rhetoric emerging from your country at that moment in history—not just from the government, but from the media and supposedly critical journalists as well—provided a ready and constant fuel for my anger.

  It seemed to me then—and to be honest, sir, seems to me still—that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away. Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest of humanity, but also in your own.

  I resolved to do so, as best I could. But first I had to depart. I rode to JFK on a crisp, clear afternoon, an afternoon that reminded me of my trip to the institution and the view from that bluff above the Hudson. I thought of Erica removing her clothes and then, having shed her past, walking through the forest until she met a kindly woman who took her in and fed her. I thought of how cold she would have been on that walk. And so I left my jacket on the curb as a sort of offering, as my last gesture before returning to Pakistan, a wish of warmth for Erica—not in the way one leaves flowers for the dead, but rather as one twirls rupees above the living. Later, through the windows of the terminal, I saw that I had caused a security alert, and I shook my head in exasperation.

  What exactly did I do to stop America, you ask? Have you really no idea, sir? You hesitate—never fear, I am not so rude as to forcibly extract an answer. I will tell you what I did, although it was not much and I fear it may well fail to meet your expectations. But first let us leave this market; the shutters are coming down, and some unsavory characters are lurking about. Where are you staying? The Pearl Continental, you say? I will walk you. No, it is not far, and although it is dark and parts of our route will at this time be deserted, we should be fine. Lahore is, as I have said before, quite safe from the standpoint of petty crime—and besides we are both fortunately possessed of those aspects of stature and appearance that tend to give ruffians pause.

  12.

  FROM YOUR backward glance, sir, I gather you have noticed that we were not alone in our desire to depart. Yes, others have made their way to Mall Road behind us, such as that waiter who was so unusually attentive and yet seemed to rub against your grain. There is nothing surprising in that; the evening’s work is now done. I would ask you to direct your gaze instead to these lovely buildings—in varying states of disrepair—which date to the British era and function geographically and architecturally as a link between the ancient and contemporary parts of our city. How delightful they are: a chemist, an optician, a purveyor of fine saris, a gentleman’s tailor. Observe how often the words brothers and sons appear in their signage; these are family-run establishments, passed gently from generation to generation. No, not in the case of that retailer of guns and ammunition, as you correctly point out—but surely you must concede for the most part that they are charming and rather quaint.

  These plazas are a different matter entirely, with their harsh outlines and cramped facades; they were built largely in the seventies and eighties, before the instinct of historical preservation began to take hold, and they mottle the surface of this area like an irritation of the skin. I find them particularly unpleasant at night, unlit and empty, bounded by those narrow passageways into which one could imagine being dragged against one’s will, forever to disappear! Yes, you are quite right: let us quicken our pace; we have a fair distance yet to cover.

  Are you familiar with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? You have seen the film, you say? I have not, but I am sure it was faithful; certainly the prose version was a most powerful work. One cannot but join in the terror of poor Ichabod Crane, alone on his horse, in that moment when he first perceives the presence of the Headless Horseman. I must admit, I am sometimes reminded of the sound of those spectral clip-clops when I go for nocturnal walks by myself. How they make my heart pound! But clearly you do not share my pleasure at this thought; indeed you appear decidedly anxious. Allow me, then, to change the subject…

  I had been telling you earlier, sir, of how I left America. The truth of my experience complicates that seemingly simple assertion; I had returned to Pakistan, but my inhabitation of your country had not entirely ceased. I remained emotionally entwined with Erica, and I brought something of her with me to Lahore—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I lost something of myself to her that I was unable to relocate in the city of my birth. Regardless, the effect of this was to pull and tug at my moods; waves of mourning washed over me, sadness and regret prompted at times by an external stimulus, and at others by an internal cycle that was almost tidal, for want of a better word. I responded to the gravity of an invisible moon at my core, and I undertook journeys I had not expected to take.

  Often, for example, I would rise at dawn without having slept an instant. During the preceding hours, Erica and I would have lived an entire day together. We would have woken in my bedroom and breakfasted with my parents; we would have dressed for work and caressed in the shower; we would have sat on our scooter and driven to campus, and I would have felt her helmet bumping against mine; we would have parted in the faculty parking area, and I would have been both amused and annoyed by the stares she received from the students passing by, because I would not have known how much those stares owed to her beauty and how much to her foreignness; we would have gone out for an inexpensive but delicious dinner in the open air, bathed by the moonlight beside the Royal Mosque; we would have spoken about work, about whether we were ready for children; I would have corrected her Urdu and she my course plan; and we would have made love in our bed to the hum of the ceiling fan.

  I have also been transported in ways that were no less vivid but far more fleeting. I recall once, during the monsoon, watching a puddle form in the rut of a muddy tire track beside the road. As raindrops fell and water filled the banks of this little lake, I noticed a stone standing upright in the center, like an island, and I thought of the joy Erica would have had at gazing upon that scene. Similarly, I recall another incident, after I had a collision on my scooter, when I returned home and stripped off my shirt to see a livid bruise on my rib cage, where hers had once been. I stared at myself in the mirror and touched my skin with my fingers and hoped that the mark would not soon fade, as it inevitably did.

  Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us. Perhaps you have had no comparable experience, for you are gazing at me as though at a raving madman. I do not mean to say that we are all one, and indeed—as will soon become e
vident to you—I am not opposed to the building of walls to shield oneself from harm; I merely wished to explain certain aspects of my behavior upon my return.

  Despite my not insubstantial financial constraints, I managed every year to pay my class dues in order to receive the Princeton Alumni Weekly, which I read unfailingly from cover to cover, with particular attention to the class notes and obituaries sections at the end. From time to time I would chance upon the name of an acquaintance and I would squint intently through such pinholes into the life I had left behind, wondering how that world—the world of people like those with whom I had traveled to Greece—was evolving. Erica, however, never appeared in those pages, and while it was possible that mention of her had slipped by unnoticed in one of the issues that the vagaries of the international post had prevented from arriving, I drew hope and sorrow in equal measure from each of her episodic absences.

  I do not know what I expected to find—a notice that her novel had been published and she had thrilled classmates by appearing at the book launch? a final announcement that her body had been identified? a blurry face in a reunion photograph that could plausibly have been hers?—but I do know that time did not diminish the eagerness with which I looked. For some months I continued to email her, until her account became inactive; thereafter I limited myself to a single letter each year, sent on the anniversary of her disappearance, but it was always returned to me unopened.

  My brother married last April, shortly before I turned twenty-five. Subsequently my mother began to suggest—with increasing urgency—that I consider doing the same; she believed I was in the grip of an unhealthy melancholy and that a family of my own was the surest way for me to rediscover satisfaction in my life. She also thought I spent too much time at work or alone in my room, and not enough with my friends. Once she even asked me with visible nervousness if I was not, by any chance, gay. I had not told her about Erica, and I found it became progressively more difficult to contemplate doing so; our relationship could now thrive only in my head, and to discuss it with a mother intent—admittedly in my own best interest—on challenging it with reality might do it irreparable harm. Not, of course, that I actually believe I am having a relationship, in the normal sense of that term, with Erica at this moment, or that she will one day appear, smiling and bent against the weight of her backpack, to surprise me on my doorstep. But I am still young and see no need to marry another, and for now I am content to wait.

  You, sir, on the other hand, seem ready to bolt. What has so startled you? Was it that sound in the distance? I assure you, it was not the report of a pistol—although I can understand why you might think so—but rather the misfiring exhaust of a passing rickshaw. Their two-stroke motors, often not in the best of maintenance, are prone to sputtering in that fashion. It is most disturbing, I agree. What? Is somebody following us? I cannot see anyone—no, wait, now that you mention it there are a few figures there, in the gloom. Well, we cannot expect to have Mall Road to ourselves, even at this late hour. In all likelihood they are merely workers making their way home.

  Yes, you are right: they have paused. What do you mean, sir, did I give them a signal? Of course not! I have as little insight into their motivations and identities as you do. One can only speculate that they have dropped something, or arc engaged in conversation among themselves. Or perhaps they are wondering why we have paused, and whether we mean them ill! Regardless, there is no need for us to concern ourselves overmuch; let us continue with our midnight stroll. Lahore is a city of eight million people, after all; it is hardly a rural forest inhabited by phantoms.

  I am glad you are willing to proceed. But what are you searching for? Ah, your unusual mobile phone. If you are sending a text to your colleagues, you may wish to inform them that we are not far from your hotel—another fifteen minutes at the most, I should think, which suggests to me that I ought to make haste if I am to bring matters to a suitable conclusion. Earlier, sir, if you recall, you asked me what I did to stop America. Let me now, as we come to the end of our time together, attempt an answer, even though it may well leave you disappointed.

  The threat of war with India reached its highest point the summer after I returned from New York. Multinational corporations on both sides of the border ordered senior employees to leave, and travel advisories were issued throughout the nations of the First World, counseling their citizens to defer nonessential trips to our region. It seemed the weather was the only factor delaying the official commencement of hostilities: first because the heat was too great for an Indian offensive in the desert, then because the monsoon’s rains made driving treacherous for Indian tanks in the Punjab. September was deemed the best month for battle, since the mountain passes of Kashmir might be closed by snow as early as October. So we waited as our September ticked by—little noticed by the media in your country, which was focused at that time on the first anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington—and then the days started to shorten, the negotiations began to make progress, and the likelihood of a catastrophe that could have claimed tens of millions of lives receded. Of course, humanity’s respite was brief: six months later the invasion of Iraq would be under way.

  A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie’s concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage. This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly using India to pressure Pakistan.

  I had in the meanwhile gotten a job as a university lecturer, and I made it my mission on campus to advocate a disengagement from your country by mine. I was popular among my students—perhaps because I was young, or perhaps because they could see the practical value of my ex-janissary’s skills, which I imparted to them in my courses on finance—and it was not difficult to persuade them of the merits of participating in demonstrations for greater independence in Pakistan’s domestic and international affairs, demonstrations that the foreign press would later, when our gatherings grew to newsworthy size, come to label anti-American.

  The first of our protests to receive much attention took place not far from where we are now. Your country’s ambassador was in town, and we surrounded the building in which he was speaking, chanting and holding placards. There were thousands of us, of all possible affiliations—communists, capitalists, feminists, religious literalists—began to get out of hand. Effigies were burned and stones were thrown, and then we were charged at by large numbers of uniformed and plain-clothed police. Scuffles broke out, I intervened in one, and as a result I spent the night in prison, nursing a bloody lip and bruised knuckles.

  My office hours were soon overrun by meetings with politically minded youths, so much so that I was often forced to stay on until after dinner to ensure that I had dealt satisfactorily with the curricular and extracurricular demands of all those who sought me out. Naturally, I became a mentor to many of these men and women: advising them not only on their papers and their rallies, but also on matters of the heart and a vast range of other topics—from drug rehabilitation and family planning to prisoners’ rights and shelters for battered spouses.

  I will not pretend to you that all of my students were angels; some, I will be the first to admit, were no better than common thugs. But over the years I have developed the ability to take quick stock of a person—an ability that, I would be remiss not to point out, is in no small measure modeled on that of my former mentor, Jim—and while I will not claim to be infallible, I think it is fair to say that my sense of another’s character is generally very good. I can usually tell, for example, who in a
crowd is most likely to provoke violence, or who among my peers is most likely to complain to the dean that I need to be put in my place before my activities get out of hand.

  I have received official warnings on more than one occasion, but such is the demand for my courses that I have until now escaped suspension. And lest you think that I am one of those instructors, in cahoots with young criminals who have no interest in education and who run their campus factions like marauding gangs, I should point out that the students I tend to attract are bright, idealistic scholars possessed of both civility and ambition. We call each other comrades—as, indeed, we do all those we consider like-minded—but I would not hesitate to use the term well-wishers instead. So it was with immense consternation that I learned recently that one of them had been arrested for planning to assassinate a coordinator of your country’s effort to deliver development assistance to our rural poor.

  I had no inside knowledge of this supposed plot—which was all the more perverse for its alleged targeting of an agent of compassion—but I was certain that the boy in question had been implicated by mistake. How could I be certain, you ask, if I had no inside knowledge? I must say, sir, you have adopted a decidedly unfriendly and accusatory tone. What precisely is it that you are trying to imply? I can assure you that I am a believer in nonviolence; the spilling of blood is abhorrent to me, save in self-defense. And how broadly do I define self-defense, you ask? Not broadly at all! I am no ally of killers; I am simply a university lecturer, nothing more nor less.

  I see from your expression that you do not believe me. No matter, I am confident of the truth of my words. In any case, it was impossible to ask the boy himself about the matter, as he had disappeared—whisked away to a secret detention facility, no doubt, in some lawless limbo between your country and mine. He and I were not particularly well acquainted, as I have repeatedly testified, but I remembered his shy smile and aptitude for cash-flow statements, and I found myself filled with rage at the mystery surrounding his treatment. When the international television news networks came to our campus, I stated to them among other things that no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as America. I was perhaps more forceful on this topic than I intended.