The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

The waiter may be following the Stranger, and so Changez’s suggestion that the Stranger ignore him only makes him more anxious. The proximity of gun stores further builds the mood of danger. It’s unclear how aware Changez is of the effect his words have on the Stranger. The reference to Ichabod Crane is interesting, as Ichabod believed he was being followed by a ghost meaning him harm, but in the story it is implied, without ever being said outright, that in fact the “Headless Horseman” was another man playing a prank. The same uncertainty about the nature of those following is at play here.

Changez may have given up on the United States, but he can’t deny that his time in America has changed who he is. By the same token, he accepts that he and Erica will never be together, but he continues to love her, and recognizes the huge influence she’s had on his personality. Changez tries to explain himself to the Stranger, but based on the Stranger’s expression, he believes that he has failed.

That Changez’s parents think he might be gay reinforces how much of an outsider he’s become in his own society as well as in America. Changez’s obsession with Erica mirrors Erica’s obsession with Chris. In the past, Changez has criticized America for its nostalgia for a mythic past; here, he seems to be guilty of exactly this nostalgia, even if he denies it.

So far, the Stranger has been unsettled by things he sees -- things which Changez explains away, often by citing Pakistani custom. Now that the Stranger hears an unsettling sound, Changez's explanation is even less convincing; there are many reasons why the waiter might seem angry with the Stranger, but only so many sounds that resemble a gunshot. Changez's insistence that he doesn't know the group walking behind them only suggests that he does know them. At the same time, he raises the possibility that the group is as afraid of the Stranger as he is of them; this implies that the group, and perhaps Changez, too, is no threat to the Stranger, or is following in order to protect Changez from the Stranger. It is irritating that Changez rushes the end of his story; The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been a novel about a young man who grows up, but Changez seems to be unconcerned with explaining what he has grown up to be in much depth. Perhaps, though, this is because he doesn’t know yet. Perhaps, in fact, this encounter with the Stranger will help to determine who Changez becomes.

Changez paints a picture of the dividing line between America and the rest of the world; according to the United States, anyone who doesn't support their war on terror must be a terrorist. Since Changez criticizes America and its foreign policy, he falls under this definition of terrorist. The point Changez seems to be making is that it doesn’t matter what he does; America has already made him a terrorist.

Changez acts the part of a double agent— he learns American business strategies, and then uses them to teach Pakistan to fight American imperialism. His devotion to opposing the United States is obvious, making it plausible that he uses violence to do so.

Changez’s insistence that he doesn’t use or encourage violence may or may not be true. It’s impossible to know. At the same time, it’s not clear what Changez’s student accomplishes, and in fact, he may have hurt Pakistan by killing the welfare official. Changez may not support such pointless acts, though it’s possible that he does. In either case, whatever connection has grown between Changez and the Stranger is disappearing rapidly; the Stranger refuses to believe Changez.

Changez reveals that in a sense, he’s still in love with Erica, and implies that he may have turned to opposing America (either violently or peacefully) because of Erica. More generally, this suggests that America has created Changez the anti-American activist: it has used him, scapegoated him, made him feel lost in the world by separating him from his home country, then revoked his visa and sent him back to Pakistan. Changez reveals why he has seemed to know who the Stranger is and what his mission is all along — he has been expecting an American secret agent to come for him.

This final scene is highly open to interpretation, and captures the ways that the Stranger and Changez and the other Pakistani’s in the group following might fall prey to misinterpretation of each other. Changez has told his life story to the Stranger; the Stranger, who may possibly by a spy, may or may not believe that story. Meanwhile, the people following Changez may be following in order to attack the Stranger, or to protect Changez from the Stranger. And the Stranger may himself be trying to decide whether he should attack Changez or not, while Changez may be trying to determine the same thing about what he should do to the Stranger. By creating this moment of interpretation and misinterpretation, in which it is impossible for the characters or the reader to know the truth, in which Changez has told a story that implicates the United States in creating its own enemies out of people who loved it, Hamid plunges the reader into an experience that is almost real-world in its complexity, and that merges the themes of human connection, racism and fundamentalism, coming of age, and American imperialism in a single defining moment. Changez and the Stranger each have their histories up this point, now in this moment they will act, and that act will define them, as friends, as a spy, as a terrorist. That the novel ends before this act of becoming takes place forces the reader to grapple with all of these complex strands, to recognize that the American vs. Terrorist dichotomy imagined by Americans is not so simple, that terrorists and friends are made in moments like this, and the balance between the two can be vanishingly slight.