One of life’s ironies is that even when we do what’s right and what’s expected of us, our actions can still unintentionally result in tragedy. In his debut novel for adult audiences “The Bad Muslim Discount,” due out Feb. 2, author Syed Masood tells an irony-rich story through two powerful voices, Anvar and Azza.
Anvar, a Pakistani teen, migrates
to California with his family when his father becomes fed up with the growing
religious fundamentalism in 1995 Karachi. Something of the family’s bad apple,
Anvar is smart, sassy, and somewhat lazy. His brother Aamir is the sober,
adult-pleasing “good Muslim” of the family, if only while someone is looking so
he can get credit for it.
The story’s other narrator, Azza,
is a Bagdad teen whose mother dies of cancer and father is disappeared and
tortured by the Americans. Eventually, her father returns, with the physical
and psychological scars of his ordeal. Azza makes a secret deal with neighbor Qais—and
pays a price for it—who obtains forged passports for the three of them and they
migrate to California.
Now adults, Anvar and Azza cross paths.
A disillusioned lawyer, and still a bad Muslim, Anvar tries to help Azza, who
endures physical abuse and the threat of sexual abuse.
The action in the novel is fast
paced, from the war-torn Middle East where the characters’ lives are
threatened, to post-9/11 San Francisco, where the characters face racism and
Islamophobia. The characters are realistic and endearing. Even Aamir, the
goody-goody, has the reader’s sympathy when he becomes engaged to a woman whom
he doesn’t know is his brother’s ex-lover.
The story is full of entertaining
secondary characters like Anvar’s grandmother, who teaches him about checkers
and about life; Anvar’s pious and dictatorial mother; his father, who loves
music and punishes Anvar’s misdeeds my making him eat bubble gum ice cream, his
least favorite flavor; and Hafeez Bhatti, his paan-chewing landlord, who gives
Anvar the good Muslim discount on a shabby apartment.
The prose is compelling and
lyrical at times, such as the description of Anvar’s hometown:
Karachi, the city that spat me out into
this world, is perpetually under siege by its own climate. The Indian Ocean
does not sit placidly at the edge of the massive metropolitan port. It invades.
It pours in through the air. It conspires with the dense smog of modern life
and collective breath of fifteen million souls to oppress you. Under the gaze
of an indifferent sun you sweat and the world sweats with you (page 5).
The author’s insight about
religion and geopolitical issues is both spot on and witty. To prepare the
reader for a rather disturbing description of the sacrifice of a goat to
celebrate Eid, Masood says, “Yes, Islam has a marketing problem” (page 3). And later,
Anvar observes, “That radical Islamists and ‘America First’ nationalists had
essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a
nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony
was simply divine” (pages 181-182).
It’s the irony that dominates
this novel. Aamir, the good Muslim, who attends mosque, prays five times a day,
doesn’t drink or smoke, and becomes engaged to the woman his parents choose for
him, inadvertently causes a man’s death, even though he only did what a good
Muslim would. Anvar, the bad Muslim, does what he wants, drinks, smokes, sleeps
with women, and never prays. When he finally does follow an ethical code—for
attorneys, not for Muslims—the result is more pain for his friends.
I enjoyed the novel and found it
a rewarding read that reminded me of other excellent recent works, such as
Fatima Farheen Mirza’s “A Place for Us” and “The House of Broken Angels” by
Luis Alberto Urrea.
The characters are complex and
sympathetic. The story includes tense moments and the serious portrayal of the
violence the characters endure, but also humorous passages about human flaws
and the small tensions that occur in families.
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