Summary
Larbi Amrani is not a superstitious man, but he is a little disconcerted when the prayer beads his mother gave him break in the car on the way to work. He works at the Moroccan Ministry of Education, helping decide where newly graduated teachers will perform their two years of civil service.
He is sitting down to read the newspaper when his secretary buzzes him that an old friend, Si Tawfiq, is on the line. They exchange pleasantries and Tawfiq gets to his point—he would like Larbi to help his niece find a teaching job in Rabat. Larbi demurs a bit, irritated at the request, but eventually he tells Tawfiq he will do what he can. He will have to be discreet, but he knows it would not be a good idea to refuse to help a department head in the Surete Nationale. After all, he thinks, he did not create the system; he “was just getting by, like everyone else” (22).
At home, Larbi finds a letter from his son Nadir, who is studying electrical engineering in Quebec. Letters from Nadir are rare and they usually ask for money. Larbi does not mind, though, and takes pride in his son.
Larbi goes to his daughter Noura’s room to give her a few magazines he picked up on the way home. She thanks him, and he sees her friend, who, to his surprise, is wearing a headscarf and modest clothing. He learns her name is Faten Khatibi, and she is a student at the same university in Rabat as Noura. Noura was supposed to go to NYU but her TOEFL scores were not high enough so she is studying English here for a year before transferring. She is somewhat depressed, Larbi knows, as most of her friends had matriculated abroad.
Larbi meets his wife Salma, a prominent lawyer, in the kitchen. He asks who Noura’s friend is and Salma shrugs and says it is someone from school. She does not care for most of Noura’s privileged, snobbish friends, and Larbi occasionally feels guilty for sending his children to the best private schools while he places teachers in the public system.
Faten becomes a regular visitor at their house and Noura no longer watches games on TV with her father. One day, he hears Faten and Noura talking, and Faten is saying that if they’d been better Muslims then the problems wouldn’t have been visited on their nation and brethren elsewhere. Larbi listens, but Noura shuts the door.
Larbi tells Salma he does not want Noura to see Faten anymore, learning from Noura that the girl had flunked school the prior year. Salma thinks Noura could benefit from Faten, who is serious, but Larbi does not like their talk as they might find trouble.
Over the next few weeks, Noura is more and more engrossed in her books. Larbi is able to get her out to the theater one night, though, but the whole time he cannot relax. He has noticed Noura is not wearing makeup anymore, and the next day that her room is tidy, which it rarely is. He also finds a book on political Islam (complete with spelling errors) and a work by Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood. When he asks Noura about them, she is indignant. He tells her she cannot see Faten anymore. She demands to know why, and sulks when he says he does not like what Faten is doing to her.
A few weeks later it is the day before Ramadan and Salma is cooking. Noura comes into the dining room and announces she is going to start wearing the hijab. Her parents are stunned and push back at her, but she will not be dissuaded. Larbi is dismayed; his “only daughter [is] dressed like some ignorant peasant!... She would look like one of those rabble-rousers you see on live news channels” (34). He hopes this is a passing phase like other things Noura has been into in the past. His mind flickers to a time when she was two and he thought he’d lost her at the beach, and now it feels like he is losing her again.
When Noura comes into the room with the scarf and begins placing it on her head, he suddenly lunges for it and says she cannot go out like that. She grabs it back and says he cannot do that. Deep down he knows she is right, so he desists reluctantly. She ties the scarf on.
The first night of Ramadan is different from those in the past, which were always joyous. Noura is serious about breaking her fast, and criticizes how much food there is. They eat without talking, and the night is not special as it once was.
November is almost at an end and Larbi asks his daughter about her application to NYU. She informs her parents she is not going there, and wants to be a middle school teacher. She says there is corruption here and Morocco needs her. Larbi and Salma are angry and dismayed.
One night, Salma invites Faten to dinner, and Larbi reluctantly agrees, thinking he might talk sense into her. He notes that she is a beautiful young woman and wonders why, if God gave her beauty, she wants to cover it up. He also notes a less-than-genteel upbringing. The dinner does not go particularly well; Faten does not take the bait about embracing an offer to go to NYU, and says they all value Western degrees over their own. Later Salma asks Larbi what he is going to do about this, and he does not have the heart to tell her he already had Tawfiq look for info, but Faten has no police records.
Months pass. One day, Si Raouf comes to see Larbi. He is a lecturer at Noura’s college and he reluctantly informs Larbi that Faten passed a paper to Noura during an exam and Noura passed it back with answers. He says it is grounds for expulsion but he will keep it quiet.
Larbi and Salma furiously confront Noura, who says Faten needed help since she did not know the answers. She adds that everyone cheats, and Salma bursts out that the Holy Book does not condone that.
Noura stays in her room for two days. Larbi wonders if he could convince her to visit her aunt in Marrakech, but he decides he must deal with the Faten issue once and for all. He contacts Raouf.
Sometime later, Noura comes to her parents and happily says she passed her exams. They are pleased, but then Noura asks if Larbi can help out Faten somehow because she failed the exams, and she knows her father has connections. He cannot help but savor the moment privately, and then says aloud that he cannot do that because it would require breaking the law, which was un-Islamic. Salma adds that if one plays with fire, they get burned. Noura stalks away.
Larbi notices his broken prayer beads. He wonders why Noura turned to religion—didn’t she have a good life? Was it because he drank too much and was often gone and took bribes? In the end, it did not matter because he had lost her again.
Analysis
The reader might be initially discombobulated by “The Fanatic,” the first section in Part I: who is Larbi Amrani, and why does he matter? But soon enough, we see why, for Faten is Larbi’s daughter’s friend, as well as a big problem for him. Lalami’s narrative is thus doubling back to the four characters’ stories before they left for Spain, detailing why they were prompted to leave. Interestingly, as the reader will soon see, Faten’s story is the only one told at a remove, for all the others are from their own perspectives. Lalami explained her thoughts about Faten and how she told her story in an interview with Three Monkeys: “The character of Faten was probably the hardest to write. The issue of religious fundamentalism is constantly present in the news media and therefore readers have particular expectations of these kinds of stories. The Muslim headscarf is often associated with religious fundamentalism, which is itself connected to Islamic terrorism, so to write about a woman who chooses to cover and make her a whole, unique, complex character that defies readers’ expectations was not always easy. And it was also difficult because I am not particularly observant myself, so I had to really explore all that in her character. It’s true that choosing another character to tell the first part of Faten’s story slightly upsets the symmetry in the book, but I think that this choice works well on another level. ‘The Fanatic’ is ultimately a story about hypocrisy. Presenting Faten first through someone else’s eyes and then through her own eyes helps me question the reader’s assumptions about her.”
For many contemporary readers, Faten might indeed be unlikeable in this first section. She is unyielding, dogmatic, opinionated, and somewhat disrespectful. Her influence on Noura seems outsized; we cannot help feeling like Noura is no longer the carefree, vivacious young woman she was before. She is giving up an opportunity to go to NYU, she has ruined the previously enjoyable family traditions for Ramadan, and she has a criticism of everything that does not live up to a very religious standard. Lalami titles this section “The Fanatic,” and whether the Fanatic is Faten or Noura, it’s all the same—Faten comes across as problematic.
However, a closer evaluation of Faten’s stated beliefs and opinions in this section complicates our understanding of her, even without the humanizing second section devoted to her story in which she becomes a prostitute in Spain. Cristian H. Ricci explains that “The Fanatic” “meticulously draws attention to the movement of Islamic fundamentalism that saw its proliferation after the Islamic revolution in Iran. Furthermore, Faten’s faith in a new religiosity complements the revolutionary praxis to decolonize Morocco from the ‘evils’ of globalization, class injustice and gender prejudice.”
Faten gives voice to this through several comments she makes. First, at the dinner table with the Amranis, she derides Larbi’s encomium of NYU, saying “I think it’s a shame that we always value foreign degrees over ours. We’re so blinded by our love for the West that we’re willing to give them our brightest instead of keeping them here where we need them” (43). Second, Larbi overhears her telling Noura about the “injustice” in their country and how there is “corruption of King Hassan, the government, and the political parties” (26). She ties the corruption to Moroccans not being good enough Muslims, uniting religion and politics—Moroccans being good Muslims will benefit their country by improving their political systems as well as helping them remain autonomous from the West. Kimberly Segall says succinctly, “[Faten’s] religious revival is a form of economic protest… For Faten, the inner spirit and practice of Islam conducts a pathway towards economic and political change.” Faten’s comment about NYU and degrees is also significant: “Typifying religious revivalism, her words indict the flight of young people—of economic and cultural capital—from Morocco to the West, a drain of resources that echoes the dynamics of colonization.”
Faten’s behavior and attitude might make many readers annoyed or uncomfortable, but Lalami wants us to question why that might be the case. She deliberately holds off on providing further information about Faten’s deleterious life experiences in Morocco and in Spain to facilitate our reckoning with our own potentially stereotypical views on “fanatical” Muslims.
