Summary
Chapter 1 begins with Changez approaching the American man, who was looking for tea in the Old Anarkali market, and recommending a shop where they sit down and begin to talk. Changez introduces himself as a Pakistani man—a local with intimate knowledge of where to find the best teas and what people around them are up to—and someone who not only admires but also has strong associations with the United States.
Changez tells the man about how his solid academic performance in Pakistan earns him a place in Princeton University's Class of 2001. Changez feels proud that his hard work in school and his performance in soccer brought him to an environment with other highly motivated and talented people and teachers.
After graduation, he is recruited as an analyst by Underwood Samson & Company, a prestigious corporate valuation firm. Jim, a manager at Underwood Samson, takes a special interest in Changez because of their shared background as kids who went to Princeton from less-privileged families and always felt out of place. Changez explains his family in Lahore used to be part of the upper class but lost money over successive generations.
Although he expects that some of his hesitations while responding to Jim's interview questions and the revelation of his less-than-wealthy background will have a negative impact on his chances, Jim immediately offers him a job, telling Changez that he, Jim, has an eye for people.
In Chapter 2, Changez says he is invited by his friend Chuck to a post-graduation summer vacation in Greece. The trip was organized by members of the prestigious and exclusive Ivy Club, one of Princeton's Eating Clubs (a coeducational equivalent of sororities and fraternities), whose members are mostly very well-to-do students. Changez is able to mix among them thanks to Chuck's invitation, although he always remains conscious of his difference from the rest of them as a student who came to Princeton on a scholarship and had to work throughout his four years.
Changez soon becomes besotted by Erica, an athletic girl on the trip. Though he is anxious that Erica is more interested in Mike, another guy on the trip, she seems to share a special rapport with Changez alone. At one point, Changez sees her sunbathing topless; the two swim in the ocean together and then talk about their backgrounds—Changez about his family in Lahore, and Erica about her aspirations to become a novelist.
Analysis
In introducing himself, Changez plays a subtle game of identification with the American, to put the latter's mind at rest, and assertion of his own identity as a local Pakistani. "I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language," he tells the man, though we are also quick to notice, as so many of the Americans do in Changez's story, the somewhat British- or foreign-sounding politeness of his English, such as in his first line: "Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you" (1).
The irony, of course, is that Changez's dark skin and beard immediately set him apart from Americans—here too Changez points out that although the non-American is identified in America by his skin color, the Caucasian American's skin color does not identify him abroad—even though through his time at Princeton and Underwood Samson he has done much, perhaps even more than most of his American colleagues, to internalize certain American principles.
It is helpful to keep in mind the circumstances that lead to the situation of the frame story, i.e., Changez sitting and conversing with the American in a tea shop. The man seems to be a bit lost, and Changez, with a highly proficient and polite command of English and exuding an air of charismatic confidence, is easily able to secure him as a kind of captive audience.
Even throughout the novel Changez's words seem to suggest that the American says some things, it is evident that the American has not told his own story or anything that would make it so that their conversation is balanced. It is by enchanting his listener with remarks on their surroundings and his story of his time in America that Changez can keep him there for such a long story.
It is also helpful for understanding the rest of the story to keep in mind the circumstances that lead to Changez meeting Erica, who stands for him as a kind of synecdoche for the America that he comes to love and then finds himself alienated from. Where Princeton, and especially the Ivy Club group on their vacation to Greece, stands for a highly successful and talented America, Erica and Changez gravitate towards each other as people who not only have pasts, but pasts (whether a dead boyfriend or an upbringing in a different culture) that alienate them from their carefree peers, who are never described as having personal histories, let alone personal conflicts.
