Generation Z is one of the first generations that contains people who don’t have any personal memory of 9/11. No personal anecdotes, or charged emotions mirroring the ones they experienced that historic morning. I’m one of them. However, because of the stories of relatives and the annual screening of 9/11 footage on the news, to me, it seems like I’ve always known about and remembered this day. In the same way that this generation is first full of non-remembers, it is also the first generation of people who grew up in what we call the “security era” characterized by a “pervasive culture of fear”.

Instead of connecting with the multitude of other countries who have experienced terrorist attacks, the ones who across the world empathized with the tragedy that befell Americans, the myriad of voices raised saying, “Today we are all Americans”. While those countries throughout the world who have been through bombings, continued violence and war, America clearly took the position of the victim suffering from the incomparable.

When I ask my mom about 9/11 which I use to frequently do, she starts like many others do with a personal anecdote. “I was dropping you off at Preschool…” However, the next thing she always tells me is how different everything was. She remembers the panic around her, the chaos, the confusion, the fear as people began to wonder if this had happened in New York, where would “the terrorists” strike next. The news did nothing to stifle this. My mom says major news networks were in a constant frenzy, reporting the risk for terrorist attack at either “severe” or “high” risk, displaying footage of the attacks repeatedly, flashing the faces of the alleged terrorists on the screen, and covering the continued search for victims in the rubble. It was such a drastic change, as she recounts, “and the media has always been interested in ”

Here, we see “Caesura” – the break – between the pre-9/11 and the post-9/11 world. The emergence into the era of “security culture” illustrated through a Manichean – good vs. evil – way of thinking. From the video clip we watched in class last week, George Bush confirms this by saying, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”. By producing an “Us” vs. “Them” dichotomy, a defining feature of the world post-9/11, an enemy was created.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid, is a book written as a disruption to the western master narrative of 9/11. The novel follows Changez, a 22-year-old Pakistani man who has graduated from Princeton and began to work at a valuation company called Underwood Sampson when his life takes a turn during the events following 9/11, told through the singular voice of an older Changez in conversation with an American man. This novel can be viewed as embodying a collective of genres, from allegory to thriller. Hamid invites us to reconsider our assumptions and perceptions, saying that if we are reading this novel as a thriller, “that’s because you’re already afraid”. This connects to the idea of the “culture of fear”; this book a novel centering on the main character’s life before and after 9/11, was simultaneously a product of the culture of fear and a reaction to it. The readers of this book are immersed in the post-9/11 world and because of it, they carry with them assumptions about who represents good and who personifies the evil. The novel is written within layers, the layer on the surface allows for ethnocentric assumptions, but as you go deeper these postulations become unstable and impossible to support and believe. Hamid wants us to think critically about our position. I question,” what makes us envision this novel as a thriller; why do we see a clear good and a clear evil?”. Changez alerts us to a type of double standard, he says “I smiled” as the twin towers collapsed, yet on the next page he questions our disturbance when he asks “Do you feel no joy at the video clips… of American munitions laying waste the structure of your enemies?” (72, 73). Hamid alludes to the fact the way we view an event isn’t necessarily right of wrong, in fact both responses are morally wrong, but it depends on your position.

Instead of conforming to the Manichean idea of dualism, The Reluctant Fundamentalist can be seen as a coming of age story of a young Pakistani man living in liminality between two worlds, two cultures. The novel gives a platform for the “side of the enemy” – the perspective of the Middle East – to speak. Hamid does just this. It does it through a perfectly imperfect, humanistic portrayal of Changez and both his private and public struggles.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist . 1st. Orlando: Harcourt Inc, 2007.