Submitting But Not Surrendering

Amy Waldman, a Brooklyn resident and former New York Times reporter now embarking on a literary career, has written a novel about Islam’s place in America. But The Submission may surprise you, for in generating narrative momentum, Waldman doesn’t rely on the real yet receding threat of terrorism, the woolly "clash of civilizations" or hyperbole about how the U.S. is on the verge of persecuting Muslim Americans. This is a quietly brilliant story exploring the effects on several New Yorkers’ lives when, two years after 9/11, a jury appointed to choose the design for a memorial to the victims of the attack made a startling discovery. The name of the author of the design they selected, which they considered along with thousands of others on an anonymous basis, was Mohammad "Mo" Khan.

Waldman tells how, for some, including some members of the jury, the mere fact that Khan is a (nominal) Muslim changes everything. For others, Muslim and non- Muslim, Khan’s name becomes a rallying cry for a civil rights campaign on behalf of a vilified minority. Yet others demand of Khan, a proud architect too rigorous in his understanding of rights and duties to ingratiate himself with anyone ("Why should I be responsible for assuaging fears I didn’t create?"), that he make clear his views on Islam and terrorism. And once his design, an elaborate garden, becomes known to the public, people clamor to know whether it’s an "Islamic garden" or, even worse, a "martyrs’ paradise."

The most important character other than Mo is Chappaqua resident Claire Burwell, who lost her husband on 9/11 and is the only family member of an attack victim to sit on the jury charged with selecting the design for the memorial. She continues to support Mo’s design even after discovering his identity, but begins to resent his reticence and even grows suspicious of him.

The treatment of Mo’s predicament is where The Submission shines.
The genius of Waldman’s novel is that it captures the manner in which a
member of a group that has become part of an ideological tussle will
often come to be stripped of his humanity and viewed as a symbol. In the
frenzy following the revelation of his identity, Mo becomes a
metaphor—both for the Islamic infiltration of America (the so-called
"stealth jihad") and for America’s discrimination against Muslims.
Indeed, "Mo had found himself reinvented by others, so distorted he
couldn’t recognize himself."

Unfortunately, Mo, who grew up in Virginia the son of Indian immigrant parents but has spent the bulk of his adult life
in Manhattan’s Chinatown, proves to be almost as inaccessible to
readers as he is to the characters in the story. We know what he isn’t,
but not what he is. With time, he emerges as a sort of "man without
qualities." Yet unlike the protagonist of Robert Musil’s notoriously
difficult novel of the same name, Mo is not fickle when it comes to the
ideas and conflicts of his day; rather, his attitude to Islamic
terrorism, America’s war on terror and even America and Islam
themselves, appears to be one of pronounced apathy. Aside from his
relationship and breakup with Laila, a feisty Iranian-American lawyer,
the only thing that arouses passion in him is his right, as winner of
the memorial contest, to see his design through to fruition. He seems to
care about this more than the design itself.

The
peeks Waldman provides into Mo’s psyche may be few and far between, but
they are undeniably illuminating. Regarding the critical subject of his
motivation, Mo eventually realizes that "even he no longer knew where
the line between his ambitions and principles lay." With such
glimpses—ephemeral but consistently revealing—into the uncertainty and
self-doubt sheltered behind Mo’s sedate and imperturbable exterior,
Waldman ensures that he never hardens into the embodiment of a
sociopolitical issue. For all its fascinating exploration of the place
of Islam in America today, The Submission’s greatest achievement
remains its nuanced portrayal of one man’s complicated relationship with
that precarious place. By the novel’s end, Mohammad Khan is still
frustratingly opaque in several respects, but his travails as a Muslim
American, one decidedly un- Islamic to begin with and now estranged from
America, have become a searing personal saga.