Hamid's story concerns a Pakistani expat, Changez, who graduates top-of-his class from Princeton and gets a job as a whiz-kid financial analyst at an elite Wall Street boutique that evaluates target companies for acquisitions.
Changez is flattered by his employers' recognition of him as a real "warrior," and initially he feels fast-tracked to be a real Master of the Universe. Changez comes from a distinguished, but largely pauperized, family in Lahore, and he views his job as a way to restore the family's fortune and status. 9/11 changes all that. Changez realizes that he is merely a US-empire janissary (janissaries were originally "Christian boys ... captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, at that time the greatest army in the world"). Changez reflects: "I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country [Afghanistan] with a kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding [with India] to ensure that my own country faced the threat of war." Changez is stunned to realize that the US is no repository of progressive, sophisticated, civilized values, as he had imagined, but a brutal, reactionary, imperialistic power bent on destabilizing the whole world.
The book is written in mesmerizing prose. The entire text is a monologue by Changez, speaking in tones of exquisite courtesy to an unidentified, somewhat sinister American.
Here is an extract:
"[After 9/11] ... it seemed to me that America ... was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia.... There was something undeniably retro about the flags and uniforms, about generals addressing cameras in war rooms and newspaper headlines featuring such words as 'duty' and 'honor.' I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look *back*. Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film about the Second World War; I, a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black and white. What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me – a time of unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not know – but that they were scrambling to don the costumes of another era was apparent."
Carl
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