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Read an excerpt of Discontent and Its Civilizations

Discontent and Its Civilizations

Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London

by Mohsin Hamid

Hardcover, 240 pages | purchase

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Mohsin Hamid has been called a water lily for the way he's drifted from place to place. The 43-year-old novelist and essayist, born in Lahore, has established roots, grown and thrived in places as disparate as Pakistan, London, California and New York. He's best known as the author of the 2007 international bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist which has been published in 30 different languages, was shortlisted for Britain's Man Booker Prize and was made into a 2013 movie directed by Mira Nair.

Hamid's professional life began in the business world, not in book writing. After attending Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he worked as a management consultant in New York. But his first novel, Moth Smoke, published in 2000, launched him into the literary spotlight. The story of a dissolute former banker in Lahore, Moth Smoke was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, given for an outstanding debut work of fiction.

Hamid went on to publish two more novels and eventually left New York for Lahore, where he lives with his wife and two children. His new book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London, explores some of his thinking, reflection and recollection over the past 15 years. Speaking with Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, he examines some of the fissures of the post-9/11 world, the value of "mongrelization" — and the power of love.

Interview Highlights

On being an outsider

"I was born in Pakistan and came to America when I was three, and I spoke Urdu fluently. But I arrived in America and quickly discovered from the kids around me that I didn't know how to speak, because I couldn't speak English.

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"So I learned English, forgot Urdu, went back to Pakistan at nine, and discovered, of course, that once again I did not speak properly. So I learned Urdu. And I bounced around between America and Pakistan and Britain for most of my life.

"So I'm somebody who can blend in usually quite quickly — but inside continues to retain a sense of feeling foreign."

On re-thinking the presumed link between poverty and terrorism

"I don't think terrorism is only the poor man's politics. I don't think that that narrative is complete, so it's probably worth us reexamining it.

"But I think at a deeper level, what we see is people are becoming hybridized, mongrelized. They're becoming Western, Muslim, American, Pakistani — at the same time. And if we can encourage that kind of hybridization, mongrelization, and look at it as a good thing, I think we're relatively safe.

"But if we start looking at it as a bad thing (and many people do) then a desire is born to try to separate one's self, one's different parts — to not be Pakistani and American or Muslim and European, but to pick sides. And when that happens, you see young people feeling they have to reject what they think they are becoming. They are becoming tainted by becoming Westernized. And so, in a way, the war is a war with part of themselves."

On the drawbacks of drones

"I think that it's completely understandable that the United States would wish to deploy drones in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, I think that they're deeply counterproductive for a number of different reasons.

"One is, of course, they do kill innocent people. Two is that — even when they kill people who aren't innocent — they have the effect of allowing, in a country like Pakistan, the continued view that America is to blame, that America's intervention is to blame, for extremism in Pakistan.

"And of course, America has played some role in extremism developing in Pakistan. But I think Pakistanis have to recognize — and many do recognize — that the most important role has been played by Pakistanis themselves. And so the drones prevent Pakistan from basically taking the lead in its own effort to eradicate these extremists.

"Nobody from outside can police it. Pakistanis have to come to the conclusion that they have to fight this fight for themselves, and drones, I think, prevent that from happening."

On love

"All of my novels are love stories, in a way. And — and I think, in a way, I think love is kind of the plot in our lives, you know? The early loves we have, the loves of our parents when we're kids, the loves of our friends. Romantic love, love for children, you know — all of that, that's what provides the structure on which human lives are built. ...

"And it's in a way embedded in the culture and even religion of the part of Pakistan I'm from — which is that one of the ways in which we can confront the horror of being mortal and dying one day is to love enough that we're not so central to ourselves that we can't face the fact that we're going to end.

"And I think in these times, when you see politicized religions and all kinds of extremisms and the market taking over everything, love, in a way — it sounds like a soft thing to say, but I think the ability to feel for others is a potential way out."

Mohsin Hamid

essay

Lahore

Pakistan

As we reported late Friday, the House managed to approve a one-week extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which President Obama signed. The passage capped a day of scrambling that saw a longer three-week stopgap shot down in the House.

But the thorny issue that has weighed on a longer-term funding bill — an insistence by Republicans that it include a push-back on the president's executive action on immigration — is still in the air. And the clock is ticking on the fresh deadline to resolve the impasse.

Where might things go from here?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"Republicans said they expected that next week the House would end up going along with the Senate's bill funding Homeland Security through September without immigration changes. 'I don't think there's any alternative,' said Rep. Charlie Dent (R., Pa.) 'When we're at the end of next week, what do we do?'

"An aide to House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the Republican leader had made no commitment, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said she expected the one-week measure would buy the time to pass a funding measure that would cover the remainder of the fiscal year."

Politico adds:

"Boehner's allies are concerned after Friday's setback that his critics inside the Republican Conference may try to oust him as speaker if — as expected — he puts a long-term DHS funding bill on the House floor next week. While Boehner shrugs off such speculation, close friends believe such a move is a real possibility. ...

"Twenty-five Republicans voted against Boehner for speaker on the floor in early January, signaling his continued problems with his conservative hardliners. And Boehner's allies believe that the earlier DHS debacle on Friday, when 52 Republicans voted against the three-week plan, was in part aimed at toppling the speaker."

The Hill notes:

"Pelosi ... didn't explain why she and the Democrats — who were adamantly opposed to a three-week extension — suddenly reversed course to accept the one-week deal just a few hours later.

"The Democratic leaders declined to comment on whether their agreement to the seven-day deal came with assurances that the House would vote on the Senate's 'clean' DHS bill providing funding through September."

House Speaker John Boehner

House leadership

Congress

Department of Homeland Security

Sadiqu al-Mousllie sees humor as a good way to fight growing anti-Islam sentiment in Germany.

He lives in Braunschweig, in western Germany. Earlier this month, he decided to go downtown and hold up a sign that read, "I am a Moslem. What would you like to know?"

"This is a bridge of communication," the Syrian-born German says. "Some people dared to ask, some others not, so we went to them and give them some chocolate and a say of our prophet to know what Muslims are thinking about."

Mousllie, 44, says he hopes to do it every other week.

Several members of his mosque — including his Danish wife, Camilla, and their 17-old daughter, Sarah — joined him on the first outing.

The teen says many passersby were curious about her and her mother's Islamic headscarves.

"The weirdest question I got was if I'm showering with my hijab," Sarah says. "And I'm just — no, I don't shower with hijab, how should I do that? No one showers with their clothes on."

i

Born in Syria, Mousllie (shown here with his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah) came to Germany more than 20 years ago and is now a German citizen. Soraya Nelson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Soraya Nelson/NPR

Born in Syria, Mousllie (shown here with his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah) came to Germany more than 20 years ago and is now a German citizen.

Soraya Nelson/NPR

Her mother, who converted to Islam, says many Germans are equally confused about her being Muslim.

"They don't know ... where do I belong," says Camilla Mousllie, 42. "Some are confused and ask: Are the Danish people Muslim?"

But Sarah says she doesn't mind answering strange questions if it can help put to rest any misconceptions about Muslims and open up a dialogue with non-Muslims.

Their community in Germany is under increasing scrutiny after several recent threats and fatal attacks linked to Islamic extremists in Europe. The scrutiny sparked criticism from German Muslim leaders, who say it's is unwarranted and alienates Muslim citizens who've worked hard to integrate into German society.

Misinformation and discrimination, the dentist says, often hit Muslim children — including his own — the hardest.

Born in Damascus, Mousllie came to Germany nearly a quarter century ago to study; he eventually settled here and became a German citizen.

His five children, who were born in Germany, are Danish citizens like their mother, but they largely identify as German, Mousllie says. So when his son was in fourth grade and was told he didn't belong, the boy was upset.

"A friend of his in the class, he told [my son]: 'You are not a real German because your name is not German,' " Mousllie recalls. "That was a very bad situation for him. I felt it was like a world falling down for himself because he felt, well, am I part of this country or not?"

In recent years, Mousllie says he's been asking himself the same question.

At his specialty dental practice, Mousllie says he is treated like any other German. Outside the office, it's another matter.

"It's getting more difficult because a lot of Islamophobic themes are coming, people now mixing Islam and terror, so we have to explain a lot," he says.

Also alarming, Mousllie says, is the rising number of incidents against Muslims and mosques around Germany, including an attack three months ago in Braunschweig on a Syrian-born woman wearing hijab whose foot was run over by a car.

"You keep thinking what about my children, what about my family, how it's going to be in two years," he says.

Mousllie says watching democracy in Germany inspired him to fight for similar freedoms in his native Syria, and he serves as the German representative of the opposition Syrian National Council.

At home in Germany, as the Lower Saxony spokesman for Germany's Central Council of Muslims, Mousllie says he's tried to get authorities to help reduce tensions, including by not using what he and others in the Muslim community view as inappropriate words — for example, Islamism — when talking about extremists.

His efforts suffered a setback on Feb. 15 when Braunschweig authorities canceled a famous annual Carnival because of what Police Chief Michael Pientka called an Islamist-related terror threat.

"We know we have an Islamist scene here," Pientka told reporters, adding that from now on, the authorities would be watching it more closely.

Islam

Muslims

Germany

Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister turned prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead today on a street in central Moscow, the Interior Ministry told the Interfax news agency.

The Russian-language news website Meduza reported that Nemtsov was walking with a woman near the Kremlin at the time of the attack. A spokesman told Interfax that at least seven shots were fired at Nemtsov from a passing car.

Police are investigating, Interfax said.

Nemstov, 55, was the head of the opposition Republican Party of Russia-People's Freedom Party. He served as governor of the Novgorod region and as deputy prime minister in the 1990s. As NPR reported in 2007, in the 1990s Nemtsov "was an icon of democratic reform, a crusading minister anointed by former President Boris Yeltsin to be his political heir."

He later became an opposition leader and sharp critic of Putin.

Last year Nemtsov was among opposition leaders who gathered in Moscow to protest the government's crackdown on independent media and opposition groups. As NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported at the time Nemtsov likened the mood in Russia to "Germany of the 1930s when Adolf Hitler called anyone who disagreed with him a traitor."

"It's honestly like in the Hitler time," Nemtsov said at the time. "If you are against Putin, you are against Russia. If you are against Putin, you are American spy.

Boris Nemtsov

Russia