Mohsin Hamid

Focus on the fundamentals. This was Underwood Samson’s guiding principle

We built the Royal Mosque and the Shalimar Gardens in this city, and we built the Lahore Fort with its mighty walls and wide ramp for our battle-elephants. And we did these things when your country was still a collection of thirteen small colonies, gnawing away at the edge of a continent.

Is he praying, you ask? No, sir, not at all! His recitation—rhythmic, formulaic, from memory, and so, I will concede, not unlike a prayer—is in actuality an attempt to transmit orally our menu, much as in your country one is told the specials.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond—only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

Probably this was why I had been willing to try to take on the persona of Chris, because my own identity was so fragile.

I inhaled and shut my eyes. There was a mental state I used to attain when I was playing soccer: my self would disappear, and I would be free, free of doubts and limits, free to focus on nothing but the game. When I entered this state I felt unstoppable. Sufi mystics and Zen masters would, I suspect, understand the feeling. Possibly, ancient warriors did something similar before they went into battle, ritualistically accepting their impending death so they could function unencumbered by fear.

more a novella than a novel,”

“It leaves space for your thoughts to echo.”

“It’s like I’m an oyster. I’ve had this sharp speck inside me for a long time, and I’ve been trying to make it more comfortable, so slowly I’ve turned it into a pearl. But now it’s finally being taken out, and just as it’s going I’m realizing there’s a gap being left behind, you know, a dent on my belly where it used to sit. And so I kind of want to hold on to it for a little longer.”

I met her eyes, and for the first time I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a diamond that becomes visible only when viewed through a magnifying lens; normally it is hidden by the brilliance of the stone.