RESPONSE ESSAY 4- Advika Agrawal

‘Mixing Islam with Western culture is like mixing poison with water’ is what Ali, Parvez’s son believes. In My Son the Fanatic, Parvez, a Pakistani taxi driver who has moved to England wonders why his son is acting strangely. The taxi driver learns that his son, has rejected Western culture to embrace radical Islam. The father, who has bad memories of Pakistan, fully accepts Western culture, eating pork, drinking alcohol, befriending a prostitute and working so that his son can attend college and become financially successful. For Parvez, the material world is all important. Ali treats his father with contempt, despising him for his drinking and weakness, and for not understanding that, in Ali’s opinion, Pakistanis will never be accepted in English culture as equals. They engage in generational and religious culture clash. They can’t understand each other because their values are so seemingly far apart.

The story acquires its greatness as the location of the story’s resolution lies with the reader. The hypothetical worst in the reader has been awakened in the realization that Ali has become a fundamentalist. For a first and large part of the story, the reader’s sympathy is channelized towards Parvez and his fears about his son. When Ali rebukes his father for his behaviours and then reprimands Bettina for her attempt at reunion, the reader strongly identifies with Parvez. We, as the reader, are with the father throughout, as Ali has been fabricated in a fairly monolithic and one- dimensional manner. As Parvez approaches his son’s room, we, as the reader, are still with him as some level of confrontation is required. However, it is Kurieshi’s genius to shift advocacy in the most forceful of manners when we see Parvez beating his son. At this point, most reasonable readers would say that Parvez has crossed some demarcation and there is little in way of support that can be offered. When we are confronted with this reality, it is in this moment of reflection where the story “goes on.” The reader must take the dynamic that is present between both father and son and leave the story assessing their own views. When Ali asks his father, cut and bleeding from the abuse, “Now, who’s the fanatic,” there is a moment where we, as the reader, have to assess our own views on terrorism and its perceptions of it. This is how the story goes on, for it continues in the mind of the reader.

Parvez seems like the real fanatic at the end of Kurieshi’s story. Parvez’s fanaticism is seen in his frustration with Ali. His singular focus on his son’s changes illuminates his fanaticism. He is narrowly insistent on wanting his son to go back to the way he used to be. Incapable of dealing with Ali’s changes, Parvez is unable to think about anything else. He is “unable to read the paper, watch television, or even sit down.” Parvez keeps “pouring himself drinks” because he cannot move past the fact that his son is different than before. His inability to comprehend that Ali is different underscores his fanaticism. However, Parvez’s fanaticism is most evident when he enters his son’s room. Parvez does not pause to observe his son praying. He is so singularly focused on wanting to reach his son that he does not reflect for a moment that he should not bother a person in prayer. Parvez’s brutality underscores his unreasonable zeal: ‘Parvez kicked him over. Then he dragged the boy up by his shirt and hit him. The boy fell back. Parvez hit him again. The boy’s face was bloody. Parvez was panting. He knew that the boy was unreachable, but he struck him nonetheless.’ Parvez is described in fanatical terms. His use of violence, the intensity underscored in his “panting,” and the fact that he clearly knows that there is no productive end to what he is doing, and yet does it anyway, describe a fanatic’s state of mind.

The in-depth analysis of the story thus, questions the significance of the title. The title seems appropriate firstly because it represents the gulf between father and son. One can almost imagine Parvez saying this to his taxi cab colleagues with a sense of despair and lament not because of his son’s condition but because of what it will reflect on him as a father. One of Parvez’s fundamental challenges, and failures, as a father is that he is so committed to what others think of he and his name that he believes, wrongly, that his son will follow the same philosophy. Another reason why the title is noteworthy because it is meant to be ironic. In the end, the father is more of a fanatic than the son. The father is the one who abuses a child who is praying and splits his lip open in a drunken rage. He is unable to communicate anything other than anger and wrath because of what his son has become: A devout Muslim. It is here where the title is most appropriate because the “fanatic” is not the son, but the father. However, society, as biased as it can be against things it does not understand, would most likely see the son as the fanatic and not the father, for it, too, does not understand why its values would be rejected. In this, further alienation of the youth is present, leading to greater labels of fanaticism for that which is not understood, making the title not only appropriate but quite prophetic and gloomy.