Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar, is about an author’s struggle with being a Muslim in America. The rich narrative, part biopic, part fictional in the book offered via his visits to Pakistan, mother’s deep attachment to her birth country and father being a super successful doctor treating Trump, has the qualities of a racy thriller, as well as deep nuanced thought. The combination of both, is simply heady!

I thoroughly enjoyed the banter between the father and the son in the book. His father, a famous doctor when he makes the progression from being a researcher to private practice, after a few successful years, the practice goes belly up. He gets wrapped up in a legal battle. The entry of capitalism in the medical space had led to the private practices like his, being bought up by MBA led firms. These firms, insist on maximizing the number of patients that the doctor sees, thereby reducing the doctor patient time together. It’s a good example of when capitalism runs a practice, and it’s no longer service provided, but probably automation of the service staff in the assembly line. This theme of circling around the concept of capitalism in America, happens in a lot of chapters in the book.

Another interesting character that the book devotes a long chapter to, is the friendship between Riaz Rind, a Pakistani origin wannabe billionaire debt fund manager and the author. Together they want to change the view of being a Muslim in America. Their story together weaves a great tale of two main themes of the book: Muslim and Money. The Author and Riaz make for a great combination in the beginning, albeit later, the author was self admittedly too seduced by his money power.   

“Constantly defining yourself in the opposition to what others say about you is not self-knowledge, it’s confusion.”

I totally loved the use of the word Elegies in the name of the book, which I googled to find that it means a pensive or reflective poem that is usually nostalgic or melancholy. This is indeed the tone of the book, a reflective writing about being a Muslim or even an immigrant in America.      

A conversation between Akhtar and his Mausi (mom’s sister) had me reading parts where they talk about Salman Rushdie’s Nero complex, multiple times. The moot point being that when you come to power having up surged it, you are never free of the worry that your claim to power is not legitimate and this fear of illegitimacy, makes you suffer a lot. 

Another interesting topic that the book touches upon is the disparity between rural areas and large cities in America. It’s a big marker of the changing fabric about how people think and vote. It’s a fairly complex problem, so I will stay away from drawing a tidy simple conclusion. However, that politic is so divided is likely to have its roots in economic disparity across urban and rural spread is quite obvious.
 
Excerpt from the book that I want to leave you with:

America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought. The pointers about the American declaration of independence, explained as not wanting to pay taxes to a queen, strips it of all its nobility.