Stereotypes of Fundamentalism and Consequences

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professor with militant connections” (NY Times 2013). She mentioned her second screenwriter William Wheeler and said that they both came up with the role for the American and for the narrator. She thinks for screening purposes they have to establish an ending; otherwise, the audience would not accept an unfinished story line especially when it is a movie. Plus, she wanted to show in the end how the roles of both characters reflect their values as human beings and not just their political roles.

Although Ms. Nair, an Indian director making a Pakistani movie seems like an odd choice, but if we look into her roots, then we can see that her father was raised in Lahore before Pakistan and India was separated. So that connection makes her a natural fit for this movie. In her interview with the NY Times in 2013 she talks about her first visits to Pakistan and the feeling, the emotional bond that she felt. Also, she saw a completely different side of Pakistan than the one the media always shows, including their music, hospitality, and modern painting that was truly amazing to her. She decided to put that aspect of Pakistan on the screen and for her that vessel was Hamid’s novel.

There was another reason that she decided to do this movie and that is for her son. In the book it says after the attack on the twin towers, Changez was on his way to New York from a business trip with his co-worker but he was pulled away from the group into the detention room and was subject to a strip search. In book its says “ I was escorted by armed guards into a room where I was made to strip down to my boxer shorts” (Hamid 74). This happened to him because of his skin color and her son was also subject to the same kind of treatment. In her interview with “The Sunday Morning Herald, 2013,” she mentioned her son’s ordeal where he was questioned and then taken away to a detention room for more questioning. However, in the movie we saw that Changez was strip searched in the US, not in Manila and she probably did this because she wanted to show the intensity of the aftermath of the 9/11 attack and also show the audience what it does to a person emotionally. In the book it says “I flew to New York uncomfortable in my own face: I was aware of being under suspicion; I felt guilty” (Hamid 74). So Changez had to go through this kind of humiliation even though he had nothing to do with the attack.

Hamid’s version of the story ended in a way that left us in suspense thinking that Changez really is an extremist who hates America. Is the American really a spy or an assassin who is there to kill him? However, in the movie, we see a different ending than in the book. We see that Changez wasn’t really a terrorist nor did he abhor the US. Rather, he was the victim of racial profiling and that is what he was trying to tell the American. In the movie we know who the American was and also that he was there to find out about the missing American professor. In the case of the missing American, Changez was the prime suspect but it turns out that he is not; instead, he was trying his best to clear out the misunderstanding that the American had about the Pakistanis and about him. These kinds of transformations from book to movie dramatically change an audience’s perspective about a situation. As a reader our imagination can run wild and we can come up with our own ending. However, as an audience, most of us know two things are going to happen here, first that evil is going to lose or secondly, the one who was trying to play the role of the righteous person is actually wrong.

The message of the novel is altered by revealing who the anonymous American was and also not ending the movie in an ambiguous way. The transformation of the Hamid novel into a movie by Nair gives us a clear-cut analysis of the story. Ms. Nair showed the audience through her movie the hidden message left by Hamid for his reader. Also, we see how racial profiling and stereotypes after 9/11 destroys an innocent person’s life. By revealing the American as a spy in the movie she is able to lay a base for the movie and make it clear to the audience so they can understand what is the message is. She shows us in the movie that not every person is a fundamentalist.