The time had come for me to decide what to do with my life, and where to do it. The choices I faced were confusing.
By the summer of 2001 I had produced a draft ... a stripped-down, utterly minimalist love story of a young Pakistani man in New York who is troubled by the notion that he is a modern-day janissary serving the empire of American corporatism.
People often ask me if I am the book’s Pakistani protagonist. I wonder why they never ask if I am his American listener. After all, a novel can often be a divided man’s conversation with himself.
