Long-listed for the Orange Prize, The Submission, is about the politics of grief and how liberal America made mistakes dealing with the post-9/11 trauma
IN December 2009, there was national controversy around the proposed demolition of a 19th century building near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan to make way for an interfaith community centre, part of a complex called Park51. This was about a decade on after 9/11 when YouTube already posted a video at the time titled, ‘No Mosque at Ground Zero’ in an attempt to stop the so-called ‘Islamification’ that many Americans feared. And although some relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks supported the idea, protests were passionate, most organised by groups like the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America who named the project the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’.
Originally named Cordoba House, the Park51 Project was opened to the public on September 11, 2011 amid such dissent, some registered by political leaders who said it was insensitive to families whose relatives died in the attacks. Former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani called it a ‘desecration’ at the time it was proposed, even though Obama acknowledged the right of Muslims to build a community centre.
When former New York Times journalist, Amy Waldman wrote the first draft for her novel, The Submission, this controversy around 9/11, Islam and freedom of religion hadn’t happened. Organisers of the project were unprepared for angry protests from some relatives of 9/11 victims. Waldman captures these developments as the essence of a period in American history through her characters. What was in fact a passionate debate drawing on the politics of grief resonates unknowingly throughout her writing. If writers had used 9/11 as a story board (some of the best reads: John Updike’s Terrorist, Martin Amis’s The Last Days of Muhammad Atta, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Don DeLillo’s Falling Man), Waldman saw what was yet to come. Essentially predicting what would happen 10 years after the attacks, her novel deals not only with lingering grief but deeply emotional questions that continue to play havoc: the perception of Muslims and Islam in the West, the stress of immigration and identity politics.
The story is set in 2003 and about a 9/11 memorial. Each character is carefully construed such as the grouchy jury chair nearing retirement, the manipulative female governor, the intelligent Bangladeshi widow who becomes collateral damage or the mercenary journalist trying to further her career. Each one of them operate in relation to the rest of the cast: and with a carefully spun plot at the heart of which Mohammad Khan, the American-Muslim architect and Clair Burwell, a 9/11 widow meet, this debut will be read and re-read if only to understand why intentions can be misunderstood.
It is these two characters alone — Khan and Burwell — who embody the tolerant liberal attitude absent from the American psyche after the attacks, says Waldman. The Submission is unique in the 9/11 novel genre because it takes trauma and its consequences (the suspension of civil liberties, intolerance, racism) together, not allowing America to get away with hatred and violence because of the shock of loss. The title is indicative of what Waldman intends to explore: the word ‘Muslim’ means ‘one who submits’.
The novel opens when a jury of artists, academics and relatives of the 9/11 victims meet to select a design from anonymous submissions for a monument to be built on Ground Zero. A proposed design, ‘The Void’ has the support of well-known artist Ariana Montagu but when the winning design, ‘The Garden’ is selected, the jury learns that the name attached to the blueprints is of a Muslim architect, Mohammad Khan (Mo). His design is for a geometrical Persian styled garden with a wall inscribed with the names of the dead. Burwell, representing the families of the victims is the only member in favour of Khan’s design.
Burwell is outnumbered and cruelly pressured to retreat her support. Waldman’s portrait of the intelligent and wealthy young widow’s grief and loss is astonishingly real — we are privy to the thoughts and actions of a woman for whom the struggle to accept isn’t about thrashing another religion but about coping with her life in the present.
Through Burwell, the writer questions ‘liberal’ America and its blanket hate that turns violent when it comes to Muslims, that pushes Khan into a corner, questions his design, questions his family background, his beliefs, questions his reasons to travel to Kabul (unknown at first that he was sent on a work visit to assess a design plan for the US embassy) after which he grows a beard to gauge the reaction of his fellow Americans and questions his work ethic as an architect working on projects in America.
To the reader, Waldman is saying that being Muslim American right after 9/11 was either bad for business (Khan is asked to keep a low profile, explain his concept and change his design and it is even suggested that he withdraw quietly from the competition), or could get you killed.
The media uproar after Khan’s design wins doesn’t surprise with newspaper headlines such as ‘A Lovely Garden and An Islamic One?’ but he is adamant that he should not need to explain his design as an American who merely submitted, only to be selected. Everyone has an opinion and the rhetoric is translated into violent action. This raises questions: Should Khan have worked harder to calm the heated debate by simply explaining his design so that his detractors understood where he was coming from? Why did Khan remain silent and retreat without addressing the concerns of the victim’s families so that there was peace between two communities, enemies overnight for no fault of each other? When Khan’s Garden is seen to be an Islamic garden, a ‘victory garden’; and those who wish to fight it are adamant in their resistance, why does Khan become a silent spectator? Is Khan so arrogant or is he so flawed as a person because he fails to go beyond what he stands for without looking at the damage that is predictable? Waldman leaves these questions unanswered.
The characters around Khan and Burwell manage their individual pain but there is an uneasy connection that holds the stories and the conflicts as the plot unfolds. We learn little about Anwar, a Bangladeshi immigrant from Brooklyn, beyond the fact that her husband was among those killed in the attacks. Brave and outspoken, she claims compensation for her husband’s death and speaks out in favour of Khan’s memorial — but for her, it will prove costly. Struggling with ambition, journalist Alyssa Spier will do anything for a good scoop as she exacerbates Khan’s opponents by writing in her column, “The problem with Islam is Islam”. Right-wing radio host Lou Sarge uses a tagline ‘I Slam Islam’ while another of the anti-memorial activists, Debbie Dawson, “had to be close to 50, but her blog, The American Way, showed her in a see-through burka with only a bikini beneath.” Waldman’s satirical apercus inspired by reality is what makes this novel complex and with characters that reflect stories and conflict that made the post-9/11 American psyche a casualty of war.
What is disturbing, perhaps deliberate because Waldman wants the conflict and its history to be the focus is gaps in information about Khan and Burwell as two Americans with different lives and how their consequent decisions changes the future for many. There is something attractive about Khan’s fierce, unrelenting silence at first — when he’s with lawyer and lover, Laila Fateh, he is moulded into a Heathcliff-like enigmatic figure — and then, later there’s something remote and solitary about the 37-year old architect that has much to do with identity politics. Maybe when his country relented, Khan had had enough and decided to withdraw because he hadn’t understood that the need of the hour was to build bridges and forgive his fellow countrymen whom he never expected would turn on him with paranoia because he was born Muslim. As the head of the memorial jury observed: “This obstinacy would be Khan’s undoing, Paul hoped. Yet perversely, Mo’s stubbornness was also increasing Paul’s respect, even affection for him, and perhaps salving his conscience, too. Khan had drive, Paul’s drive. If this contest didn’t make Mohammad Khan, something else would. He carried his own path within him.”
The writer is a staffer at the monthly Herald
The Submission (NOVEL) By Amy Waldman William Heinemann, London ISBN 0434019321 320pp. £12.99