In this term for ASTU, we are reading the novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The novel revolves around a man named Changez who recounts his life to another person. He starts by talking about moving from Pakistan to America to study at Princeton, getting a prestigious job, and falling in love with Erica. In the novel, Changez’ word is changed on 9/11 where his “outsider”ness comes to the forefront.

The most fascinating scene in the whole book is that in Chapter 7 where Changez and Erica have sex for the first time. In this scene, Erica is unwilling to be with Changez because she is still in love with her boyfriend who had died, Chris. In order to remedy this, Changez proposes that he pretends to be Chris and as he does, they continue their physical intimacy, The whole scene is shrouded in allegory (as it has to be because this is an intellectual work and no one inserts a sex scene is high brow novels unless it means something.) Erica in this scene is a metaphor for America and in order to be apart of the American society Changez has to change himself, he has to pretend to be Chris.

What interests (or disgusts) me about this scene, is if you read it as an event and not as an allegory. It becomes less about a man desperate to be accepted into society and more about a desperate man willing to pretend to be something he is not in order to have sex. The line that perturbs me the most is, “I was Chris and she was with Chris, and we made love with a physical intimacy that Erica and I have never enjoyed” (105). I find that this line in particular is ignorant to Erica’s experience during this event. In my opinion, Changez and Erica did not “make love,” you need a deep emotional bond between both parties in order to do that. He then goes on to compare the sex to entering a wound, making him feel like he had been violent.

This scene fails to answer, how did Erica feel about all of this? Although she does not explicitly say no, Erica does not explicitly say yes. The troubling metaphor of the wound makes me question whether or not Erica wanted to participate.