”My Son the Fanatic” by Hanif Kureishi

The story My son the fanatic is wrote in 1997 by Hanif Kureishi. The story is told in a religious way, where we are going to hear about how hard is it for an eastern person, example a Punajbis, people from Pakistan, to fit into the western culture and to be accepted in the western culture. It is a story about the fear for his son is going to be a man and about the mistrust between father and son. The father thinks the son is on drugs while the son is particularly religious and praying several times at day. And an immigrant from the easts life and thoughts in a country in the western part of the world The story is told in media res, it starts out of nowhere and we do not know anything about the person’s life before the story. The actual story is told in chronological, but with a lot of flashbacks of Pravez memories. It is told in past tense with a third person narrative and an omniscient narrator and with a normal language.

His name is Parvez, he has a son, Ali. He is a taxi driver. He drives at the night because there are more money in night driving than day driving and because “the roads are clearer”. I will characterize Ali’s father Parvez as a weak character. He is in a way ignorant of what his son Ali is doing. He cannot talk with his friends except the brass Bettina that his thoughts is. He cannot handle his own son. On a short time Parvez and Ali are going from “brothers” to Parvez feels like his son is torturing him. Parvez is a Muslim, but he does not adhere to the rules Muslims have. At the restaurant where he wants to talk with Ali he is drinking long drinks. And after the discussion in the cab he is drinking unhampered. He is also eating bacon, which is pork, and Muslims may not eat pork. My opinion is that Parvez is not faithful to his belief.

Parvez is a perplexed person. He is like Ali says, “Too implicated in Western civilization”. He is doing everything the British people would do, just to fit into the culture. Parvez is violent. He is kicking his son at the end of the story, when the son is praying. He is doing it because Ali is evil to Parvez’s friend the brass Bettina.

The setting takes place in England, in a relative big city, which could be London, I think it is in a relative big city because of the brass’ and prostitutes stands in the middle of the city, and there are comparatively many of them. I also think it because Parvez says the roads are cleaner at the night, which can stand for there is heavy traffic at the day.