Book: An American Brat

Author: Bapsi Sidhwa
Publisher: Penguin, India 1993



Pakistan is a diverse country with many different people speaking many different languages, adhering to many different faiths, and loyal to many a political ideology. It is also a country, where despite constitutional safeguards, diversity is suppressed rather than encouraged. Despite this, the people of Pakistan have shown tremendous resilience against assimilative and centralist forces. Out of one such resilient community, the Parsis, comes Bapsi Sidwah, Pakistan`s acclaimed English language novelist. Her unique position within Pakistan reflects well in her work.

She creates a central character and then drawing upon her unique and rich experience she pits this character against a time period, creating within a perspective for the character with which the character views the world, based on the events of the story. `American Brat` is one such novel.

It is the tale of a young Parsi girl (Feroza) set in the late 1970s` Lahore. It is a trying time for Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan`s popular Prime Minister has been overthrown, and an army dictator has taken his place. The army dictator, Zia ul Haq, is credited with/blamed for Islamization of Pakistan. The rise rigid thinking in the country of which Zia stands accused of being a proponent of is what creates the plot for the novel. Zareen, Feroza`s mother, is weary of her daughter`s growing conservatism, which she considers an anathema to Parsi values which are in her opinion modern and progressive. The dialogue between her husband, Cyrus, and herself in the first Chapter reveals the sentiments of time. Clearly, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto comes across as a hero to the Parsi community, the embodiment of liberalism, and progress and the champion of women`s rights. Zia and his henchmen, the Mullahs are shown as exact opposites. In the backdrop of this intense political environment with its impact on personal life, Zareen convinces her husband to send Feroza to the US for a few months.

Despite opposition from her extended family, and the Parsi community in Lahore, Feroza travels to the US, where her youthful uncle Manek, Zareen`s youngest sibling, welcomes her. Her landing at the New York Airport is not without incident though. She is stopped at immigration, and her bags are searched. Embarrassing questions are hurled at her and her indignation is apparent in her response. However, she is rescued by the arrival of Manek. She doesn`t hit it off with Manek immediately, who is barely six years older than her. Manek`s constant efforts to prove to Feroza America`s superiority over Pakistan doesn`t go down well with Feroza, who considers herself a patriotic Pakistani. Manek`s ridicule of Z A Bhutto as the `socialist bastard` further aggravates Feroza. After a while however, Manek and Feroza come to terms with each other, though Feroza still scorns Manek`s continuous need to berate Pakistan, its people and all of third world. Finally Manek convinces Feroza to go to College in the US. A convenient college with conservative Mormon values is found in Twin Falls Idaho and Feroza is packed off there. This is where, Feroza, the well mannered and proper Pakistani Parsi girl comes across her roommate, Jo, a fat ill-mannered All-American girl. Feroza and Joe soon become close friends. At this juncture of the novel, the reader is made aware of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto`s hanging in Pakistan. In many ways, one can describe this as the turning point for Feroza for after this she is gradually but increasingly disillusioned by Pakistan and the Pakistani Culture.

Feroza transfers to Denver Colorado with her friend Jo. Here she makes new friends, including an Indian student who she briefly dates but is not attracted to. Finally she falls in love with David, a Jewish student, who she wants to marry. Her decision is not well received with her family and the Parsi community in Pakistan. Zareen, equipped with cash and well wishes, is immediately shipped to the US on the mission to dissuade Feroza from her decision. Zareen, inspite of her better judgement takes a liking to David, and begins to consider a possibility there. She soon revises her position, irked on by letters from home, and sets herself again to rid her daughter`s life of David, the original mission she had set out for. In the end she succeeds in scaring David away with over exaggerated picture that she paints of Ethnic Parsi life.

An American Brat arouses all so familiar emotions that are due to various opposing forces and undercurrents within any educated Pakistani who has lived or studied abroad. Modernity vs. tradition, isolation vs. assimilation, tolerance vs. bigotry, and even third world vs. first world are the dominant undercurrents and conflicting emotions that Feroza and by default Pakistan (since Feroza comes across as the microcosmic image of Pakistan, or its sole representation in her college). Zareen`s concern for her daughter`s growing conservatism invokes much of the debate. Zia ul Haq, the army dictator, is the embodiment of bigotry, even as Bhutto comes across as the champion of Liberalism despite his shortcomings. Mullahs, religious extremism, and growing intolerance of society in general are attributed to the political changes in the country. Bhutto`s hanging is seen as the final capitulation to fanaticism, and the unleashing of a Dark Age for Pakistan. The author however does through her characters also reveal the other side of the Bhutto conundrum. However, the overall impact is in favor of the man who is `heroic and handsome` and who has paid with his life for the poor people he tried to emancipate. The failure of the popular struggle and the control of the dictator on state machinery, bureaucracy and the media is aptly described in Zareen`s comment: `I realized then that there is no such thing as a spontaneous uprising unless it is sanctioned!`

After taking to tasks the surrender of Pakistani society to extremism under the army dictator, the author moves to the second issue in the book, i.e. religious isolationism. Feroza, like the author, belongs to the Parsi community that is a small and isolated community. In fact someone has aptly described them as a minority within minorities. There are merely 120000 adherents of the Parsi faith all around the world, usually doctors, engineers and paid professions. Despite having a relatively progressive outlook, the members of this community are staunch isolationists when it comes to the matters of religion, and marriage. Even though a Parsi man can marry a non Parsi woman invoking scorn from the community, a Parsi woman cannot marry a non Parsi man without being ex communicated from the faith. By making Feroza fall in love with a Non Parsi, Bapsi Sidwah dares to question this law which is held sacred by the holy men of the faith. Even though Feroza loses the love of her life, the reader is left with an impression that Feroza is determined more than ever before to marry outside the faith even as she is determined to remain in it herself.

Finally, the last issue that is taken up in this book, is of the culture shock that an International student from the third world faces experiences in the US. We start with a shy soft spoken shalwar kameez clad girl whose mother thinks she is too conservative. At the end of the book we are left with portrait of a self confident, and an independent girl who has no hang ups about her individualism, sexuality etc. Gone are the shalwar Kameezes and the saris, though she might wear them to feel ethnic. Jeans and shorts have taken their place.