Pakistani novelist and New Yorker Mohsin Hamid

DATE September 20, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Richard Reeves discusses his book on Pakistan, the
military history of Pakistan and about modern life and attitudes
there
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Now that President Bush has ordered American bombers to within striking
distance of Afghanistan, we're trying to learn more about that part of the
world. Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, has agreed to help the United
States, but the president of Pakistan faces opposition within his country.

My guest, journalist and author Richard Reeves, lived in Pakistan in 1983 when
Afghanistan was a war with the Soviets, who had invaded the country. He's
continued to visit Pakistan every few years. Reeves is best known for his
books about American presidents. He has a new one called "President Nixon:
Alone In the White House," based on recently declassified tapes and papers
from the Nixon White House.

In 1983, you moved to Islamabad with your wife. She was reporting on
conditions in the camps housing refugees from the war across the border in
Afghanistan. And a couple of years after that, you wrote a book called
"Passage to Peshawar." What was our relationship with Pakistan when you were
there in 1983?

Mr. RICHARD REEVES (Journalist/Author): Yes. My wife went there to work in
the refugee camps and later founded an organization called the Women's
Commission for Women and Children Refugees because she realized that women in
these countries had no power whatever and she wanted to try to create a
structure where they could sometimes get together without men being there. It
was--that was pretty exciting stuff, but we were driven out by posters
targeting my wife as the whore of the West who was doing this to our women.
They did not want, both the Pakistans and much more the Afghanis--the Afghans
don't want women educated, in general. And that's why they went to the hills
against the Soviets when we were there, and that's why they have gone to the
hills, as it were, against us.

The country was very similar then. This is--I mean, for people who don't
know, Pakistan is a Muslim country, a Muslim republic which was thrown
together after the partition in India in 1947. It's the eighth largest
country in the world. There are 150 million people there; totally Islamic and
it has a military government now, as it did then. I've known the last three
leaders--four leaders of Pakistan, and the military is the only thing that
functions well in the country--roads and trucks. It's built on the old
British colonial system. That is, who you work for, what you are determines
your entire life. If you're in the military, you live on military bases.
Your children go to military schools. When you retire, the military gives you
property. It has trucks. It has roads. It has airplanes. It can
function--it has communications. It can function somewhat in the modern
world. Much of the country is not in the modern world. It's not in the 18th
century, much less in the 21st century. And there is a constant battle there
between religion and modernism, which we now see as spreading across the
world.

And the trick to being--Musharraf, the current general running it--Zia-ul-Haq
was running it when I was there--played this very difficult--and there were
very sophisticated men who played this very difficult role, as you see
Musharraf doing every day today. He has to be with the United States. The
country cannot function without the United States. It's been something of a
client state of ours now since the Cold War. Gary Francis Powers in the U-2
took off from a secret base in Peshawar. So he has to keep us happy, but at
the same time, the Muslim fundamentalism that we're seeing in the
world--people like Osama bin Laden--what they are rebelling against is
American presidents, basically. Bin Laden formed his organization when
American troops went into Saudi Arabia to help reserve the royal family. So
that what they had been doing over this time is trying to export their
fundamentalism, first to Afghanistan, and now to the United States and other
parts of the world because they--each day is a battle, whether you're a
military ruler or the king of Saudi Arabia or the king of Jordan, against the
fundamentalists who would like to take the country over in the way the
ayatollahs took over Iran and turned it into a true Islamic state.

GROSS: What are the difficulties of the position we're putting the Pakistan
government in now by asking them to side with us in the coalition to end
terrorism...

Mr. REEVES: Well...

GROSS: ...and to try to get Osama bin Laden?

Mr. REEVES: The Pakistani leadership, which is now military, is--although I
must say in these kind of military governments, the civil service, the
bureaucracy and whatnot doesn't really change. They're professionals, often,
of great skill and they run the country, the economy, the diplomacy. The
maximum leader--in this case General Musharraf--is in a position where his
country cannot survive without the United States and it cannot survive if
fundamentalist Muslims turn on it. So this is a man on a tightrope ever
ready to be knocked off either because we're unhappy or because the
fundamentalists gain enough strength. So he's got to try to play our game and
their game at the same time.

And they're not the only country in the world. I mean, you know, Jacques
Chirac is here in America right now talking about how he's supporting the
Americans, but back home, the prime minister, Jospin, is telling people, `My
job is to protect the French people,' which really means we are not going to
cooperate with the Americans. We're not going to let American planes fly over
France. We're not going to give the Americans bases and troops to fight
against or attack or retaliate against Muslims, because, after all, we are a
country that--I don't know what France is now, but it's probably a quarter
Muslim--more. And most of its young people--this is the great challenge of
the man in the White House now is to understand what the real agendas of the
country, whether it's Pakistan or France, is and work out a way that they can
do what we want while the other side isn't quite sure they're doing that.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Reeves. He's written
extensively about Pakistan. His new book is about President Nixon. It's one
of several presidents that Richard Reeves has written about.

You were saying to me before we started our interview that we have to keep in
mind that our allies are really allies only on certain issues. Apply that to
Pakistan. In what areas are they our ally? In what areas are their interests
different from ours?

Mr. REEVES: Well, they are our ally primarily because it is our strength
and, to a certain extent, China's strength, which allows them, they feel, to
survive against the strength of India, which is the dominant power, by far, in
South Asia. India's the United States and Pakistan is Canada. And they,
every day--and both of them have developed nuclear weapons. And who will
those nuclear weapons be used against? They'll be used against each other.
So they need the United States to keep their military modern, to give them
enough money to get them modern communication equipment, etc.

On the other hand, they need Afghanistan. They and we created this monster
called the Taliban and if, without strong United States presence, one of the
Taliban options is--and they are militarily ready--is simply to move into the
north of Pakistan and create a larger--very similar to Kosovo and Serbia--to
create a larger Afghanistan at the expense of a smaller Pakistan.

GROSS: When you say that the United States and Pakistan created the Taliban,
what do you mean? We've heard a lot about how America funded and armed the
Mujahedeen in its fight against the Soviet Union, but what's the connection
between the United States, Pakistan and the Taliban?

Mr. REEVES: After the Mujahedeen defeated the Soviets--and they defeated
them because the United States, basically, gave them Stinger missiles. It's
exactly the same as Vietnam. With Stinger, heat-seeking missiles, suddenly
the Afghan, the Mujahedeen, could bring down Russian planes and helicopters.
The Russians did the same thing we did. They no longer flew close to the
ground. They bombed from on high and what they hit no one knows. And,
eventually, they were defeated in that war. The Mujahedeen immediately broke
into a vicious, many-faceted civil war and the country spun out of control and
became a great threat to all its neighbors, including Iran, but especially
Pakistan.

And at that point, the United States and Pakistan got together to create an
organization which was trained in the northwest frontier. And it was
religious training, but they were being trained militarily to invade
Afghanistan. They were mostly Afghanis, but there were many Pakistanis and
Saudis among them. And, eventually, they did get themselves together with
equipment paid for by America, invaded their own country, Afghanistan, and
liberated it, if you want to use that word, and right now control 90 percent
of the country. There was a man named Ahmed Masood, who controlled the very
north of Afghanistan, who died in a suicide bombing two weeks ago, which was
obviously linked to the terrorism that we now have here.

This is an old American tactic which has not always served us so well. When
we could not control Al-Fatah in the Middle East, we got together with the
Israelis to create a new rival organization to eliminate Yasser Arafat's
organization. This was 25 years ago. That organization was called Hamas, and
it became a monster, too. We're not too good at this, it turns out.

GROSS: Well, what are some of the lessons you think we should have learned
from the past as we face this fight against terrorism?

Mr. REEVES: The lesson from the past is the Crusades and learning what these
countries are really about. One of my criticisms of Bush was his use of the
word `crusade' to talk about this. The word `crusade' means a great deal more
in that part of the world than it does here. `Crusade' is just a word here.
Their history is continuous and the fight that is going on now between Muslim
fundamentalists and us has to do with a lot of things. It has to do with
modernizers vs. traditionalists, but it also has to do--because these
fundamentalists wouldn't control a modern country, they couldn't control a
modern country--but it also has to do with the fact that in their minds, this
is a Christian-Muslim continuation of the Crusades. So that for an American
president to throw out the word `crusade' in that part of the world is like a
match in a field of oil.

GROSS: At the end of your book "Passage to Peshawar," you wrote, `I came back
from Pakistan thinking that if the United States does fail this time in
Pakistan, if we lose Pakistan, it will not be because American ideas and
ideals were not worthy, but because we didn't seem to think that illiterate
masses were worthy of sharing them. Without those ideas, what were we out
there? Just more people with guns.' Can you talk a little bit more about
this revelation that you have at the end of the book?

Mr. REEVES: I haven't, obviously, read or seen or heard those words in
almost 20 years, but what I meant by them was that--and I'll speak just for
Pakistan, but it's true in other parts of the world, too. For our own global,
strategic reasons--and this was during the Cold War--we supported military
governments and monarchies--Medieval monarchies like Saudi Arabia; hard
military governments like Pakistan and other places because it suited our Cold
War purposes. And educating the masses, feeding them--they're called the
masses in Southeast Asia--would not be helpful in that because if the people
of Pakistan were educated, they would overthrow the military government. And
at that time, we would have considered that a great Cold War loss. And in
other countries, an educated populace, educated women, men with engineering
educations, a restless, rising middle class would overthrow these vestiges of
centuries past, and it wasn't in our interest that that happened.

GROSS: My guest is journalist and author Richard Reeves. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Richard Reeves. He has a new book called "President
Nixon: Alone In the White House." We're talking about Pakistan, which is the
subject of one of his earlier books.

Now you were telling me that you have some friends who were imprisoned in
Pakistan and are now living in the United States. When and why were they
imprisoned?

Mr. REEVES: Well, they were imprisoned or under house arrest because their
side lost. In the latest, the prime minister of Pakistan--we go from
Zia-ul-Haq to Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif, now to General Musharraf. Each
time there is a turnover like that there are a certain number of people who
have rolled the dice with the regime in power. One of the great stories in
this country, the United States--almost without exception, elites in other
countries now have either relatives or homes in the United States, which they
are ready to--the Washington suburbs are filled with them. Los Angeles is
filled with them. If you go to Miami at night, you'll see very few lights on
in those great towers because, in fact, they're owned by the first families of
Latin America who will run to Miami if their governments are overthrown.
That's the new, modern--that's part of the globalization of life today.
Everybody has an escape hatch and it's usually to the United States.
Everybody who is educated, we are the kind of escape of last resort for
millions of people.

GROSS: I'd like to know what you're thinking emotionally. You must be very
attached to Pakistan and that part of the world. You've lived there. You
keep returning there. What are some of the things going through your mind?
What are some of the emotional conflicts you may be feeling now, looking
ahead?

Mr. REEVES: It's not an emotional conflict. It is a sadness and a
depression that they will never get it together, these wonderful people. They
have been unable to escape the Middle Ages and that includes my friends, who
are great landowners in these countries. They won't give up their land, which
would kind of--we see this all over the world. The wealth in these places is
the land and, for a few people, education in the West. And they simply will
not give up a system. I've forgotten the numbers now, but 90 percent of the
wealth of Pakistan is owned by 20 families. I may have that number slightly
wrong. And they have been unwilling to do what our founding fathers did. And
the price they're going to pay for it is someday there will be no Pakistan.

GROSS: From the time that you lived in Pakistan, what are some of the things
that you learned that you haven't yet shared with us about why so many people
in that part of the world really hate the United States?

Mr. REEVES: People hate the United States because we are trying to--we are a
very revolutionary people in our own way. So, to a certain extent, were the
Russians. And the best example is when we come in and take over, we want to
educate women. Almost all these societies function with women as fifth-class
citizens and the religious leaders, particularly, and village leaders don't
like that thing.

But to boil that down, this is America's problem, I think, in Pakistan and in
many other parts of the world. We are running the world. We are the most
powerful empire in the history of the world. We mean, we think, well, but
other empires, whether the Romans, the British, the Turks, did not expect the
people whose lives they were transforming, often negatively in their view, to
love them. We expect to run the world, tell the world what to do about
free-market economies, about elections, about what kind of vegetables you can
grow, what month Santa wants, what the drug companies want to sell--we want
the world run that way. We're going to tell them exactly what to do and we
expect them to like it. We expect them to love us. And they don't. They
admire us. They'd like to have what we have, but they don't want to be us and
they don't want to be told by us what to do. So there's always a great deal
of resentment out there by many, many people.

And if I can just say one thing about my own business, I mean, the press, my
business, has failed this country terribly by withdrawing from foreign
coverage. Americans don't know this. I mean, you couldn't find out what the
Taliban was by watching the nightly news in this country for years. We've
withdrawn our foreign correspondents and now all we cover is our own health
and welfare. And we have, despite all our power and education, become quite
ignorant about a lot of things in the world.

GROSS: This reminds me of something that a refugee commissioner told you. In
1983 when you were in Pakistan, he said, `It's all very far away for you in
America, isn't it? But it's not as far as you think.'

Mr. REEVES: That's exactly right. I had totally forgotten that. Right. I
was sitting in with them. They all had their little Kalashnikovs on their lap
and Abdul was his name. Was it?

GROSS: I don't remember.

Mr. REEVES: I think he was Commissioner Abdul. He was the commissioner of
the northwest frontier province when I met him. He was a tough guy. I
wonder what happened to him? But, yes, that's what he said and he was right.

GROSS: Richard Reeves, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. REEVES: Thank you so much, Terry. It was a great pleasure.

GROSS: Richard Reeves is the author of many books, including "Passage to
Peshawar." His new book is called "President Nixon: Alone In the White
House." Our interview was recorded earlier today.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, living in the East and the West, worrying about both.
Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid describes his country and shares his concerns
about his family in Islamabad and his friends in New York. He just moved from
New York to London.

And David Bianculli reflects on TV's coverage of last week's attacks and how
the attacks are affecting plans for the new TV season.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Author Mohsin Hamid discusses his novel "Moth Smoke,"
what it was like to grow up in Pakistan, and the differences and
similarities between Pakistani people and Americans
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Mohsin Hamid is a novelist who has lived in the East and the West and
is very worried about both. He grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and returns to
the country for a couple of months each year. His family still lives there.
He went to college in Princeton, and to law school at Harvard. He recently
moved from Manhattan to London.

Hamid's novel, "Moth Smoke," is set in Lahore and centers around a young man
who is the Pakistani counterpart of an American Yuppie. He works for a bank,
but when he loses his job, he falls from the middle class into a life of
crime.

The Village Voice called "Moth Smoke" a `descendent of hard-boiled lit and
film noir, a darkly amusing book about sex, drugs and class warfare in
post-colonial Asia.'

We called Mohsin Hamid in London yesterday.

Your family lives in Lahore. What do you hear from them?

Mr. MOHSIN HAMID (Author, "Moth Smoke"): Well, from my family in Lahore I
hear that all the banks are working one day out of every two. All the foreign
corporations have sent home their staffs. But my parents are right now in
Islamabad, and there things are a bit more intense. The embassies have sent
home all their independents and non-essential people. And when my parents
went out for dinner early this week, in the restaurant they were having dinner
in, there were a number of war journalists who had come to cover the conflict.
And as you imagine, they were pretty frightened by the end of the meal.

GROSS: What did they overhear?

Mr. HAMID: Well, people were talking about, you know, everything from kinds
of weapons systems that would be used to the kinds of forces that would be
deployed to the potential for civil war in Pakistan. And I think if you're
sitting at a meal and somebody's having that sort of detached conversation
right next to you, it really rams home the fact that life has changed.

GROSS: Your new novel, "Moth Smoke," starts with a Sufi story. Would you
tell the story?

Mr. HAMID: Well, in the 16th century in the Mogul Empire, there were a number
of princes who were competing for the throne. And this Sufi saint--and Sufis
are these sort of mystical, you know, sect of Muslims who believe in finding,
you know, unity with God through self-purification. So they're mystics much
like--you know, much like Martin Buber is a Jewish mystic, or the Zen are a
sort of similar mystical sect.

So this story is about a saint who comes to see the emperor as the emperor is
approaching his deathbed and asks to hear the names of his sons. And as he
hears the names of his sons, each of the names has a meaning. So, you know,
one of them is Mohrad(ph), and he--that which means an ambition. And the Sufi
tells the, you know, emperor that he'll never achieve his Mohrad, and so on.
In the end, he gets to the emperor's favorite son, whose name is Dalah(ph),
which is the same as Darius, and the Sufi tells him, you know, this guy will
meet the same fate as Darius did at the hands of Alexander, which is death.
And the youngest son, Aurangzeb, the Sufi tells him that, yes, this one will
be fit to be king.

And in the war of succession that followed, it was true, Aurangzeb did become
king. But Aurangzeb was an orthodox Muslim and a brilliant general, whereas
his main rival, Darashikoh, was a pantheist. He translated the holy, you
know, Hindu scriptures into Persian. He was a wine drinker, a poet. He was
defeated. And in that moment, basically Mogul India chose to take a much more
orthodox path which is less inclusive. And it fell apart some years later.

GROSS: So the father's youngest son kind of ends the type of religion that
the father believed in?

Mr. HAMID: Well, the father was, I think, a lot less orthodox than the son,
and I think Aurangzeb was sort of, you know, very well known as a very
orthodox and also rather intolerant emperor. And I think, you know, what the
book is alluding to is that that kind of intolerance is not the way
forward--it wasn't the way forward then, and it's not the way forward now in
Pakistan.

GROSS: Do you think that story relates to today?

Mr. HAMID: I think it does relate to today. I think what you see in a
country like Pakistan is that there's a debate going on. There are people who
are, you know, secularists, progressive, who want to see--you know, while
being Muslims, who want to see a state built on, you know, democracy and rule
of law, etc. And you see other people who are looking to the past to, you
know, ideal notions of what the great Islamic civilization was for inspiration
about how to go forward. And those two groups, you know, have not yet
resolved their differences. They're sort of in the process of working those
things out.

And in that struggle right now suddenly comes this divisive issue of, you
know, do you side with Afghanistan, a poor Muslim country next door, or do you
side with, you know, the wealthy superpower that has in the past betrayed us,
America, but in the cause of, you know, preventing terrorism. And that has
really polarized the country. And, you know, what was a slow evolutionary
process of these two groups engaging each other now has become a much more
dangerous, you know, confrontation.

GROSS: What are some of your concerns about what will happen to Pakistan if
there is a military conflict in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks?

Mr. HAMID: Well, my biggest concern is that I think the solution to terrorism
is--you know, terrorism is a crime. I think it has to be tackled as crimes
are, not the way that--you know, not by war. And crimes are tackled by having
societies that come together and act against crime. And my concern is that in
Pakistan, if there's a war, rather than making our society stronger and
bringing us together, it'll divide Pakistan. And in that division and anarchy
and, you know, bloodshed that may result, that's the sort of environment in
which terrorism and crime thrive. That's why Osama bin Laden is in
Afghanistan in the first place, because the place was destroyed by warfare.
Society is in shreds. And that's my big fear of what will happen to Pakistan.

GROSS: Your new novel, "Moth Smoke," deals with some of the religious and
political and lifestyle conflicts and differences within the country. Can you
talk about a couple of those that you see as being particularly relevant for
us to comprehend right now?

Mr. HAMID: Well, the main character in "Moth Smoke" is a guy called
Darashikoh Shezad. And Daru, as he's known, is a bit down and out. He's a
young banker, loses his job and he's not very well connected, so he has a hard
time finding another one and eventually is driven to a point of crime. And I
think his story is a story faced by a lot of young middle-class people in
Pakistan who aren't well connected and aren't wealthy. And I think, you know,
the resentment of these people at economic inequalities is a lot of what feeds
into the kinds of things that we in the West see as, you know, fundamentalism.

GROSS: As you were growing up in Pakistan, did you watch a more extreme
fundamentalism come in?

Mr. HAMID: I think so, because when I was young, I didn't really remember,
you know, seeing the kinds of armed groups that you see in Pakistan now. In
the '80s, when I was in school, I still remember we used to have a lot of
American students in the school I went to--international school in Lahore.
And there were a lot of American kids studying there. Their parents had been
sent there as part of US aid missions or other things. And, in fact, it was
full of Americans, and it was also increasingly there were young guys with
beards and, you know, Kalashnikovs that began to be seen throughout the
country. And these were the guys who were being trained, you know, in the
Mujahedeen training camps that America had set up on the Afghanistan border.
And that whole movement, that whole, you know, militant activity you really
didn't see much of before the '80s.

GROSS: What was it like for you to be growing up in an atmosphere where more
and more you saw people carrying Kalashnikovs?

Mr. HAMID: I don't know. I mean, I guess you just take it for granted. You
know, you don't really think about it. Maybe in some ways it's like, you
know, being an American kid growing up in an environment where, you know, kids
are bringing firearms to school or something. You just--it's what--it's what
you think of as normal. And we thought, really, of America as this big ally.
So you had--you know, we went to the mountains for summer vacation, and in the
mountains we'd take a bus to get up there. And on the backs of the buses--our
buses are very colorfully painted--there were these F-16s painted on the back,
these American fighter planes that were given to Pakistan. And underneath
that was (foreign language spoken), which is `God is great.' And so the idea
of this militant Islam and being an American ally was actually all one concept
in those days.

GROSS: Was there a time when you felt that that changed?

Mr. HAMID: I mean, it changed very dramatically around the time I graduated
from high school, when I went off to college in the States, which is 1989. At
that time, the relationship was, I think, still relatively good. And then,
you know, the Afghan war was won; the Soviets were driven out. And almost
overnight, American aid disappeared; Pakistan was blacklisted. My cousins,
who tried to go to college a couple of years later, found it a lot more
difficult to get visas. And it was sort of hard to understand. But we had
come to be seen by America if not the enemy as, you know, certainly not an
ally.

GROSS: My guest is Mohsin Hamid, author of the novel "Moth Smoke." We'll
talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Mohsin Hamid, author of the novel "Moth Smoke." He grew
up in Pakistan, where his family still lives. He went to college and law
school in the United States and just moved from Manhattan to London.

Your novel is in part about what it's like to be young in a big city in
Pakistan. And talk a little bit about the kind of similarities and
differences between urban life in Pakistan and urban life in London or New
York.

Mr. HAMID: I think it's interesting because, you know, Pakistan is an
incredibly diverse country and we have deserts in the south and we've got
glaciers in the north and we have river valleys in between. And the people
are like that, too. So in a big Pakistani city like Lahore, you have a party
crowd which is completely--you know, would be at home in any nightclub in New
York. You've got, you know, young intellectuals who are, you know, just like
the people holed up in the libraries at, you know, Harvard and Princeton.
You've got, you know, your regular folks who are sports fans.

So I think all of these sorts of groups of people exist. I think many
Americans, if they came and met young Pakistanis in cities, would be shocked
at how similar these people are, especially since so many of them speak
English as well.

But that said, I think these groups that I'm talking about are still a
relatively small share of the population. There may be millions of these
people, but out of 140 million, that's still not that many. I think, you
know, for the young urban Pakistanis, like young urban people everywhere,
they're looking for ways to have a good time given the constraints of the
society around them.

GROSS: Yeah, and I think some of the characters in your novel go to discos
and...

Mr. HAMID: Yeah, well, there's no discos. That's the whole thing. I think
the one thing which is very different between Pakistan and a place like
America is that because of the restrictions, you know, that are posed on the
society, everything happens covertly. So people have parties in their houses.
You know, alcohol is all bootlegged. And, you know, many people, of course,
party without drinking. Most people don't drink alcohol. And, you know,
dating is all very much frowned upon. So it may just be, you know, a walk
after class in college with somebody that you really like, as opposed to, you
know, really going on a date. So everything happens, but it happens in a more
covert way.

GROSS: Now you're writing a new novel now that has to do with fundamentalism
in Pakistan? Is that right?

Mr. HAMID: Well, I mean, sort of but not exactly in Pakistan. It's the story
of a young Muslim guy who's working, you know, in the West, in New York,
actually, and who, you know, begins to sort of encounter his own spirituality,
in a way. But that it just frightens the hell out of everybody he works with,
and it's just a story of what that misunderstanding is about.

GROSS: What is it about?

Mr. HAMID: I think it's a fear just born out of mutual ignorance. I think
that, you know, the vast majority of Pakistanis who, you know, are Muslim and
are observant are completely non-threatening folks who also will watch
"Baywatch," which is probably the most popular TV program that you can get on
a satellite dish. And they work in banks and offices and wear ties and, you
know, drive scooters and cars and are perfectly normal people. But for some
reason, the image of the Muslim in America is really a frightening one. And
so the book is really about how that happens and how it's possible to see a
guy who is actually very secular as a Muslim but is still completely
misunderstood.

GROSS: Is this in part about yourself in terms of being misunderstood?

Mr. HAMID: Well, not really. I think, you know--I don't feel particularly
misunderstood. I think that, you know, both because of my background, the
colleges and law school and whatnot that I went to in the States, and the fact
that I had a job in New York City, etc., I never felt particularly
misunderstood in that sense. But I saw other people perhaps, you know, whose
English was not as good or who didn't go to graduate school in the United
States or, you know, for whatever other reason seemed more foreign. And I
think the attitude toward those people was very different.

For example, I would sometimes sit in a cab with friends of mine in New York
and the guy would be a Pakistani guy. And before I'd have a chance to say hi
to him and start chatting with him in Urdu, the person I was with would start
speaking to him, you know, in a very sort of brusk kind of way and then after
that would, you know, say--you know, would perhaps make a comment about the
way he was driving, the way he looked in a way that sounded, you know, vaguely
uncomfortable.

And that was really interesting to be sitting there as a Pakistani who could
speak with this guy and understand him if I chose to, but sort of in the seat
next to an American who didn't.

GROSS: Talk more about that feeling.

Mr. HAMID: Well, I think, you know, you feel a bit split. It's sort of a
feeling of being between two worlds, you know, having sort of love for two
different things and two different places and understanding that there's a
completely misconception between the two. So, you know, you want to sort of
step in and translate and say that, you know, actually this guy, if you were
to have a conversation with him, is a pharmacist. He couldn't finish his, you
know, degree to get his qualifications to be a pharmacist. He's driving a
cab. He sends back almost all of his after-tax income to his family in
Pakistan. He's basically a good guy. You know, he just looks a bit scary to
you. And you sort of want to say these things and interpret. The problem is
that you can only do that sort of in the lives of the people that you come
into contact with.

GROSS: The title of your book is "Moth Smoke." What does that image mean?

Mr. HAMID: Well, "Moth Smoke" is based on one of the fundamental images in
our poetry, which is the desire of a moth for the flame of a candle, the way
that moths are drawn to light. And that desire is always considered a
metaphor for different things. It's a desire for a human being's unity with
God, which is, you know, self-understanding and approaching the divine. It's
also the story of a lover who's attracted, you know, by love and is consumed
by the love.

In "Moth Smoke," the image is not the image of the moth approaching the flame
of the candle, which is how it normally is in our poetry, but of what happens
afterwards. And what it alludes to is, you know, Pakistan was a dream. It
was a country created as the homeland for the Muslims of India. And now that
we have that dream and the moth has entered the flame, what are we going to
do? What's the future? What happens afterwards? So in that sense, you know,
"Moth Smoke" is sort of what happens after the dream is consummated.

GROSS: Any thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

Mr. HAMID: Yeah. I mean, I think one thing I'd like to say is just in
America I think right now amongst many people I've spoken to, there is a
feeling that, you know, something incredibly wrong has happened, which it has,
and something tragic has happened, which it has, but also that a great evil
needs to be avenged. And my only thing is, as somebody who considers himself
a New Yorker as well as a Lahori, is that, you know, that vengeance should be
extremely careful because there are millions of people living in places like
Pakistan whose lives are about to be disrupted. And, you know, the same way
that you wouldn't tell a police force to start firing into a crowd, you don't
want to tell the military to start bombing these countries, you know, in a way
to stop a few people from committing criminal acts. So the one thing that I
think is important at a time like this is actually compassion, and hopefully
that'll help us all going forward.

GROSS: Well, I wish you the best.

Mr. HAMID: Thanks very much.

GROSS: And I hope your family's safe. And I thank you very much.

Mr. HAMID: Thank you.

GROSS: Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novel "Moth Smoke." Our interview
was recorded yesterday. He spoke to us from London.

Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli talks about coverage of the terrorist
attacks and the aftermath.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

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Commentary: Television's coverage of the attacks at the WTC and
Pentagon
TERRY GROSS, host:

TV critic David Bianculli has been watching coverage of the terrorist attacks
from the very start. Here's his report on what he saw, how he feels and what
might and should come next on TV.

DAVID BIANCULLI reporting:

Last night, near the end of a two-hour Discovery Channel instant documentary
on modern terrorism, I finally saw something on TV that made me laugh out
loud. There wasn't anything funny about the program, but during a break there
was a public service announcement from the Red Cross. The woman was advising
viewers that one way to reduce the trauma of this horrible event was to avoid
watching the worst images repeatedly. I had to laugh. How am I supposed to
do that, exactly?

When the smoke began to rise from the World Trade Center that awful Tuesday
morning, I did what my job as TV critic for the New York Daily News requires
me to do. I loaded tapes into all 11 of my VCRs and started watching my wall
of 11 TV sets. Minutes later, I watched a jet slam into the other tower live.
Since then, I've been watching television or replaying recorded news footage
as close to non-stop as I can get. When you see everything at once, you see
it all the time. The planes crashing, the towers burning, the bodies falling.

The networks backed off from showing the worst footage of destruction after
the first two days and seldom, if ever, showed the most ghastly footage their
crews had shot. But I'll never forget it, just like I'll never forget a lot
of other TV moments lately that have made me cry or afraid or proud.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I wasn't there, and I didn't lose anyone I loved
in the attacks. Even so, this coverage over the last nine days has ripped me
apart. I don't know quite how to get back to business as usual, or even if I
should. The fall TV season, delayed by the tragedy, now is scheduled to start
Monday. I have a hard time caring. But I'm getting inspiration in moving
forward from the same source that's been devastating me. I'm getting it from
television.

I got inspiration from Mark Heath(ph), the doctor who shot camcorder footage
from ground zero that first day and narrated his own words and actions as the
ocean of ash and debris rolled towards him. `I hope I live,' he said, and
when he did, he immediately got up and looked for people to help. I got
inspiration from Linda Ellerbee and Peter Jennings, who gathered kids and
experts together last weekend to present separate programs aimed at children
and their families; Ellerbee on Nickelodeon, Jennings on ABC.

There was a little girl, no more than five years old, who was asked by
Jennings how she felt about what had happened. Her dad, a sergeant in Army
fatigues, lifted her up in his lap and this is what she said.

(Soundbite of television broadcast)

Unidentified Child: I know that he's special, but I want him to be special
here, because he's always gone. And he's going to be gone even more since
they did this.

BIANCULLI: Then she cried, a lot, and so did I. But after watching that
show, I felt a little better.

Like millions of people, I got plenty of inspiration from Rudy Giuliani. And
when David Letterman came back to TV Monday night, inspired, he said, by the
mayor's urging that New Yorkers get back to work, it was one of the most
amazing, undiluted, honest moments of television I've ever witnessed. I don't
think Letterman will ever fully understand, much less accept, how valuable a
service he performed on Monday. But for those who watched, it was huge.

The reason Dan Rather broke down and cried later on that same show, which was
reported widely the next day, was mostly because Letterman, coming out cold to
talk to the TV audience directly at the start of the show, was so real.

(Soundbite of "The Late Show with David Letterman")

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. DAVID LETTERMAN (Host, "The Late Show"): Welcome to "The Late Show."
This is our first show on the air since New York and Washington were attacked.
And I need to ask your patience and indulgence here because I want to say a
few things, and believe me, sadly, I'm not going to be saying anything new.
And in the past week, others have said what I will be saying here tonight far
more eloquently than I'm equipped to do. But if we are going to continue to
do shows, I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes. And so
that's what I'm going to do here.

BIANCULLI: When Rather cries, you know it's serious. When Letterman doesn't
joke, you know things have changed. These men are TV icons, and seeing their
humanity didn't diminish them at all. It was part of their healing process,
just like watching them has been part of ours.

Historically, this is the longest wall-to-wall disaster coverage our country
has ever seen on television. Pearl Harbor, to which this homeland attack is
often compared, was a radio story. The JFK assassination was three solid days
but not nights, and the funeral gave things some sense of closure. Every
other crisis, from the Challenger disaster to the Gulf War, came and went in
smaller spurts of all-out news coverage.

So what's next? In TV news, two things. One, anchors ought to go on shorter
shifts after the second day of such marathon coverage. There's enough talent
to go around, and while reporters in the field can't really be spelled because
of exhaustion, anchors can. And when reporters are tired, anchors often are
the best safeguard from things getting out of hand or off track. The other
thing, which ought to be obvious, is that network newscasts should beef up
their international bureaus and reporting immediately. The best TV coverage
I've seen from a global perspective has been on BBC America's "BBC World
News." And they make our own national newscasts look like grade school
primers. This has to change.

And what about getting back to TV as entertainment? It's a slow process, but
it's begun already. Tomorrow night, all the networks have banded together to
present a two-hour benefit special that is absolutely unprecedented.
Performers are scheduled to include Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks and Paul
Simon, but it's the event more than any one artist that should not be missed.
And the season will start, though it won't be seen the same way.

My favorite show of the new season used to be a Fox drama series called
"24." It still is my favorite new series, and it doesn't show up until the
end of October, but I wonder how they're going to handle the series pilot,
which includes an international killer parachuting out of a passenger jetliner
just before exploding it.

And this Sunday, an intelligent new CBS series called "The Education of Max
Bickford" stars Richard Dreyfuss as a college professor who's a little tired
of the laid-back attitude of his young students. At one point, he gets so
irritated during a lecture that he confronts them with a question.

(Soundbite of "The Education of Max Bickford")

Mr. RICHARD DREYFUSS: Let me ask you this. In the history of this country,
there have been generations after generations of people who are willing to die
for something. Is there anything that you would be willing to die for?

BIANCULLI: The bell rings and the students instantly scurry out of the
lecture hall without answering that question. That proved the professor's
point, and when I first saw this pilot two months ago, it rang perfectly true.
Now I think those students would answer the question and the answer would be
different. Everything's different.

But no matter what happens next, I can guarantee this, and only this:
Television will be a huge, huge part of it. Emotionally right now TV is our
country's ground zero.

GROSS: David Bianculli is TV critic for the New York Daily News.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.