In the present text I am going to analyse an extract taken from chapter III from Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in order to understand how the most relevant elements make meaning in the sequence. It considers the moment when the protagonist is telling the interlocutor about the new districts of Lahore.

The structural and the structuring element is the figurative, social and narrative contrast expressed by the narrator’s choice of using the dramatic monologue. It is a long uninterrupted speech of the character directly addressed to his interlocutor and to the reader. It is functional to bring to surface an Eastern perspective on the events like the World Trade Centre’s attack and the American rejection of the foreigner and of his integration, silencing the stranger, his American interlocutor. It follows that the narrator’s point of view surprises the reader who is accustomed to the Western perception of facts.

Indeed, the speaking voice is Changez, a Pakistani young man whose aim is to present the dichotomy between his country and America through a two symbolical divisions. Starting from the anticipatory social one, Changez establishes the superiority of the “mounted man” to “the man on foot” in the new districts of Lahore, grouping the city’s inhabitants according to their wealth. It goes without saying that he is indirectly bringing an example of the global world’s binary system, which is the cause of the society’s hierarchy. The reader immediately understands the poor stands for Pakistan while the rich corresponds to well-of America, more precisely to Manhattan. The reader can realize it in the ironical comparison between Manhattan and Lahore’s new districts: “Like Manhattan? Yes, precisely!”. Changez’s statement is done on purpose that is to focus the reader’s attention on the two cities similarities/differences on a social and political point of view.

Changez develops the dichotomy further telling his experience of integration in Manhattan, a synecdoche for New York. The lexical choice highlights a sense of fragmentation of the city, divided into a rich district and a poor one, like Lahore. There are also other elements functional to underline the dichotomy which are linked to the senses’ language: Changez’s mother tongue heard from taxicab drivers in New York, his Pakistani food which could be tasted at the Pak-Punjab Deli, and finally his cousin’s wedding Pakistani song heard from the loudspeakers during a parade. Trying to convince the stranger of his perfect integration, “I was immediately a New Yorker”, he avoids the sense of nostalgia which comes from the distance from Pakistan, his home country. Changez manages to survive to the cultural shock affirming his identity through elements which recall his own culture. The use of irony is also functional to draw the reader’s attention on the cultural, social and economic gain between Pakistan and America, which he manages to overcome intellectually.

Changez’s purpose is to avoid the social hierarchy in order to promote social integration. He explains that becoming part of the crowd means to forget the economical gap between status and to focus on sharing feelings and experiences. You can realize it in Changez’s statement, which encourages the “mounted man” to renounce to his privilege to make citizens of different status feel the same: “But here, where we sit, and in the even older districts that lie between us and the River Ravi – the congested, maze-like heart of this city – Lahore is more democratically urban. Indeed, in these place it is the man with four wheels who is forced to dismount and become part of the crowd”. The theme of integration is also anticipated by the narrator’s choice of leaving the American stranger unnamed. Indeed, it is the interlocutor who identifies with the foreigner during Changez’s speech. He is a flat character who never changes his beliefs, the American people’s ones, among the story. American citizens are unable to integrate people who come from other countries probably because of their conviction of being superior. It follows that the similarities/differences between Manhattan and Lahore’s new districts are functional to represent the narrator's betrayed faith of being immediately part of New York. For this reason, he realizes that America is a close meeting pot, where he cannot be incorporated because he belongs to the alter world from America.