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THE INTERVIEW

I love America.

Actually, no, I love the idea of America. I’m addicted to it. I have been since I first binged on late night television while inhaling Cheetos from an industrial-sized bag that my parents bought for me and my sister from Costco.

It was the summer of 2008, and I had arrived in America for the first time on a family vacation. The world economy was collapsing around us, while American troops were dying trying to fight two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that I gave a sh*t about such momentous events. Hell, I barely understood them.

The only thing I cared about that summer were the nightly monologues of Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Steven Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. I lived for late night TV. Its combination of humour and celebration of success bewitched me. It enshrined the mantra in my head that, truly, anybody could make it in America. I hankered for that. From that moment on, I decided that I wanted to live here. My aim in life was to one day make it to one of those shows, to highlight my success in America. That was my American dream.

But let’s back up a little.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Waj. Short for Wajahat, but nobody calls me that anymore. The last person who called me Wajahat was my class 10 physics teacher, who always added a mister in front of my first name, but would end up pronouncing it Meester Waj-a-hat. Like I said, just Waj is fine.

And this is the story of my American dream. Which started, funnily enough, as perhaps many American dreams have, in the deserts of Arabia. More specifically, the oil-soaked deserts of Saudi Arabia. My dad worked as a financial adviser to several senior princes in the Kingdom.

The American presidential election takes centre stage as a real estate mogul and reality TV producer with a sleazy past battles for the presidency against a senator vying to become the first female US president. Meanwhile, a Pakistani with an American dream of his own finds himself at the heart of a dangerous powerplay that has him questioning his loyalties. Eos exclusively presents excerpts from Omar Shahid Hamid’s latest novel, The Election, recently published by Liberty Publishing…

Growing up, the only bit of economics I understood was that, as long as oil prices remained high, we were golden. At least that’s what my mom would constantly tell my sister and me. When I was about 11, a couple of years before my life-changing summer, my parents decided that, in the interests of my sister and me continuing to get a quality education, they would split the family up.

While my dad stayed on in Riyadh earning his share of petro-dollars, mom would move back to Karachi with my sister Zara and me. That way we would be better prepared in our quest for the holy grail of all upwardly mobile middle class Pakistanis like ourselves: admission into a really top notch foreign university.

The month-long trip that summer was an attempt by Dad to make sure we all spent some quality time together as a family before Zara and I went off to college. Up till that point, I hadn’t really bought into the whole spiel about needing to get into a good college. That was my sister’s department.

She was two years older than me and, from the age of six, she had gotten the notion in her head that she wanted to go to Harvard. What made it worse was both my parents acted as enablers, feeding Zara’s crazy Ivy League junkie habit at every turn, getting her extra tuitions, changing schools, moving countries, hiring admissions consultants, whatever Zara thought she needed to get into Harvard.

I continued to muddle through school, not really concerned at all about my future prospects or where I would end up. I mean, you have to have a particularly craven way of thinking if you’re worrying about this stuff at age 13. But that trip to America changed my perspective.

Now, before you start judging me as a fresh-off-the-boat desi from some rural backwater, let me stop you right there. We were as urbane and sophisticated a family as could be. I mean, we had grown up in Saudi and Karachi, we had taken holidays in London, Dubai, Sri Lanka, the Far East, and even spent one winter break attempting to ski in Bulgaria (top tip: it’s the same action as Switzerland, at a third of the cost).

But America was something else altogether. The lights were brighter, the portions were bigger, the music was louder. America felt like you were looking at life hopped up on ecstasy. For a kid who had grown up in two places where progression always seemed to be linked to having connections, a useful bureaucrat uncle here, an indulgent princeling there, America’s meritocracy, as seen on late night TV, pulled at my heartstrings.

It wasn’t till much later that I discovered how flawed my hypothesis was but, that summer, I decided that I had to somehow dip my toes in this fast-flowing river of fame and fortune. From that point onwards, I worked much harder in school, with the goal of punching my ticket to America.

The problem was, despite the petrodollars gushing into his bank account, dad could only afford to pay a portion of my tuition. After all, he had to bankroll two of us at the same time. That left me having to climb the steep and slippery slope of admission with financial aid. Zara of course managed much more easily than me.

The mothership of Harvard did not call out to her, but Stanford did. After crying for a day over the fact that she would not, in fact, be sculling on the River Charles, she accepted her fate and embraced the sunny climes of California. She graduated a couple of years ahead of me and got a job at Google, much to the delight of my parents, who now insist on holding those stupid, oversized Googler mugs every time she or I Facetime them.

I wasn’t as bright as Zara, but I did manage to get into Iowa State on a scholarship. The fact that I was stuck in a conservative-as-f*** flyover state for four years, only enflamed my ambition to get out of there as soon as possible. When I graduated, there was only one place that I wanted to go: New York City. The media and entertainment headquarters of the world, and generally considered, especially by New Yorkers, to be the centre of the known universe.

My dad would have much preferred me to follow a career in banking or accounting, or even a law degree. A reliable, predictable and very desi career. He wasn’t quite sold on my formula of success through the media. Grudgingly, he covered the rent for a studio apartment for six months. Get a job in that time or come home, he said. He was fairly confident in his prediction of my failure.

Which is what brought me, on a wet Tuesday morning in April, to the steel and glass monstrosity that was the Diamond building, on the corner of 9th Ave and 57th. Or, as New York cabbies like to refer to it, Ron’s Erection, due to its unmistakably phallic shape and the fact that the owner and chief occupant was formerly the porn king of America. But I was at the end of my tether.

Days away from my precious OPT visa expiring, I was desperate. I had tried everything. There was no job in the entertainment and media industry that I hadn’t applied for. I had offered to work as an unpaid intern at CNN; I had stood in line for four hours in a blizzard to apply for a job as a junior writer on The Daily Show; I had temped for a month at Fox News, getting lattes for douchebags whose faces I couldn’t stand on TV. Their politics didn’t matter to me. I just needed to get a toe in the door. But I hadn’t been able to get anything permanent. New York’s media industry was just not interested in a Pakistani with a communications degree and little else.

My father’s deadline had passed me by two months ago. He gave me a three month stay of execution when I broke down and started crying on the phone. But he had been very clear that this was it. The end of the line. The spectre of a one-way plane ticket to Karachi in June, followed by mind-numbingly boring internships in firms owned by his friends, hung over me like a noose. The Diamond Organisation was a last ditch attempt, a scrape at the bottom of the barrel. To call it a media organisation was a stretch.

Ron Diamond had made his money in porn, first as an actor and then as a distributor. I would be telling you an egregious lie if I said I had never watched any of his movies. Though they were a little before my time, I had what is known as a ‘vintage fetish.’ But you would be hard-pressed to find a red-blooded, heterosexual male who came of age in the 1980s who hadn’t seen his movies.

Back then, Ron Diamond had been a household name, the pornographic equivalent of Michael Jordan. This was, perhaps, as he himself once hypothesised with me, the very reason for his meteoric success in his endeavours. He had then spun those c**shot-tainted millions into a real estate empire in New York.

And to further expand his ‘brand’, in the last five years, he had accentuated it by creating a hit reality TV show. And he had named this amalgam of porn, real estate and sh**ty TV, appropriately enough, Rock Hard Productions.

My mother would have killed me if she found out I was applying to a porn production house, but I was a desperate man. If they had told me that my only chance of staying in America was to become an actor in one of Ron Diamond’s movies, by this time I probably would have said yes even to that.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (17 HOURS BEFORE POLLS CLOSE ON THE WEST COAST ON SUPER TUESDAY)

I had to quit.

After deliberating on the issue for the last three days, that’s the conclusion I had come to. I had tried everything else. I had dissected Ron’s statement about ‘Islamic Ebola’ every way I could, to come up with some valid justification. There was none. This wasn’t even wolf-whistle racism. This was just regular, in your face, racism.

When Ron first said it during the last debate with Herrera, it took me a couple of minutes to register exactly what he had said. Herrera had given us a hard time. He had swept into the race in Nevada and taken full advantage of the state’s Hispanic voters to bitch-slap us. But it wasn’t just that. Herrera was eloquent, he was good on the stump and an excellent debater. And he came hard for us. It rattled Ron.

The Republican establishment, shaken by the way both the Reverend and the General had been brought down, needed a rallying point. The Reverend had packed up, even if he hadn’t formally announced his withdrawal. The General had been kept in the race just barely by a narrow victory in South Carolina. But then the Taliban took Kabul and took a dump on his campaign.

His military reputation was in tatters and his judgement had become a laughing stock. It was clear that, short of a miracle greater than Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, he would be out as well. But Herrera leapt over both those losers with his performance in Nevada.

At first, it had only been Amanda Spano backing his cause. I say only, but having Amanda Spano in your corner in Republican politics was a huge deal. I mean, for all Ron’s private claims that he had Leonard Wolfson in his pocket, the only Wolfson anchor singing for us was Phil Rorschach, or Horny Phil, as Krystal and I had started referring to him privately. Phil was the same guy who couldn’t stop staring at Krystal’s legs during dinner all those months ago. And he hadn’t changed since.

Problem was, while Phil would parrot anything Ron said, he didn’t have the clout of Amanda Spano. So, when Amanda started talking up Ryan Herrera, people started listening. Truth be told, Ron hadn’t been tested this way in the campaign up till now. We had been the underdogs, throwing punches at these caricature candidates. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. That was easy, but now we were top dogs.

We didn’t know how to deal with a hungry contender, and especially one who wasn’t so easily mocked as Herrera. He was from a working class background, good looking (a point that I know really irked Ron, even though he didn’t say it out loud), with an even better looking wife (I once spied Luke hiding backstage at one of our debates, staring at her and, it seemed like, touching himself) and, worst of all, he slammed us on the issues.

By my count, of the three debates prior to the one in California, where Ron blew up, we had clearly lost two and tied the third, at best. So we all knew Ron was fuming. Even the reaffirmation of his position on Afghanistan by most of the media, was cold comfort. Something was going to give in this last debate. I had just never expected this. Many of my Muslim friends in America and Pakistan later accused me of having foreknowledge of what Ron was going to say.

But, hand on heart, swear to God, I didn’t. The Ebola issue had only come up in so far as we had decided we weren’t going to stop campaigning. I mean, we were on the West Coast, and had no plans to go anywhere near Washington. Besides, Herrera wasn’t stopping either. He was shaking hands with every goddamn farm-worker and avocado-picker he could find from Sacramento to Bakersfield.

Only the Reverend and the General heeded the President’s recommendation. The Rev did it mainly because he realised that, since he was out of the race anyway, he could pocket the money that his campaign would otherwise have spent on travelling. And the General was getting so much sh*t for his errors in Afghanistan, that going into lockdown for an Ebola outbreak was actually a more palatable option than remaining on the campaign trail and being asked at every stop whether he still thought the war was winnable.

I didn’t think much of it even when, just before the debate, Han Diamond gave his father a print-out from some whack-job, right-wing website that had disclosed that the CDC official who had brought the virus into the country was a Muslim. But even the website hadn’t reached the conclusion that Ron came to during the debate.

During a particularly jarring segment, in which Herrera had hit us for being light on policies, Ron came out of the gate swinging. He had said he had plenty of policies ready, especially when it came to national security. He just hoped that there was a country left for him to take over, because Lincoln King was driving us into the ground and leaving us more vulnerable than ever before.

And then Ron popped his line about the CDC official being a biological suicide bomber and how it was a major security gaffe on the part of the administration for not having flagged this individual ages ago. I wasn’t the only one totally flummoxed by Ron’s allegation. I could tell the shock registering on Herrera’s face, live on TV. How was he expected to respond to something so ridiculous? He couldn’t downplay it, and he could hardly support the President. That would be suicide in a Republican primary debate.

Ron saw his confusion and pounced and, from then on, the rest of the debate was all about Ebola terrorism and Herrera was reduced to nodding his head like a pliant flunkey. I was so stunned that, when Ron came off the stage and walked directly past me, winking as he did so, it still didn’t register. I couldn’t believe that he would be so irresponsible. It must have been some kind of error, an incorrect fact that had been fed to him. With a little dexterity, we could walk it back.

All night, I sat up alone in my hotel room and tried to figure out an elegant way to extricate ourselves. First thing in the morning, I decided to go to the source of the erroneous information. I grabbed Han as we were checking out of the hotel, and asked to speak with him privately. I wanted to take him to task for giving Ron unverified information.

“Hey Han, what was the story that you gave Ron before he went on stage?”

“Oh that. That was gold dust, Waj. Pure gold. They’ve found a link between al Qaeda and that guy who brought the Ebola into the country.”

“Han, I’ve spent all of last night checking virtually every news source on the planet. There is no link between the CDC guy who contracted Ebola in Africa and al Qaeda, other than the

fact that, incidentally, he happened to be a Muslim.”

“Exactly. There you go. You’re getting smarter, Waj. Beginning to connect the dots for yourself.”

I strongly resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

“Han, there is no link. We cannot make allegations like that. It’s extremely irresponsible, you can’t give Ron made-up facts like that. What he says from that podium carries a lot of weight. We’ve got to find a way to walk this back.”

“Walk it back? Are you f***ing nuts? Did you see that crowd? They ate it up. Look at your Twitter feed. It’s been blowing up since last night. The base is going crazy. We made Herrera look like an idiot. Why would we walk it back?”

“Because it isn’t f**ing true! We can’t make sht up and have Ron say it.”

“We didn’t make anything up. It was reported in a credible publication.”

“It’s a f***ing right-wing, nut-job website!! The same site also suggests that the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t as bad as they’re made out to be, and that the federal government is hiding aliens in Area 51!”

He gave me a weird smile.

“You know Waj, I think I know what the problem is. Look, I like you, but I think your Muslim cultural biases are coming out here. You’ve got to be very careful with that. You’re a little too close to this situation, don’t you think? Just because you’re a good Muslim, doesn’t mean everybody else in the country is the same.”

“What?! My Muslim cultural biases??”

“Look, if it were, say, someone from my prep school who had been accused of bringing Ebola into the country, I’d be very touchy about it too. But, at this level, you’ve got to be able to think about these things objectively. That’s what I always tell dad about you. You’re a great guy, but still too fiery, too passionate. You need a little seasoning before you become really top drawer.”

“These are f***ing lies that you just made Ron say.”

“He doesn’t think so. I don’t think so. Millions of Americans who are going to vote on Super Tuesday, don’t think so. You seem to be the only one who thinks there is absolutely no possibility that this man deliberately contracted a deadly virus, on the orders of his radical Islamist colleagues, and weaponised his own body to strike at the United States. Can you honestly say that this isn’t a possibility that is at least worth investigating? Can you give me a guarantee, as a fellow Muslim, that there is zero probability of such an event ever happening?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I had always taken Han as a bumbling but generally harmless buffoon, unlike his younger brother, who was a genuine douchebag. He could even be endearing, especially when his weather girl girlfriend was around. I had never imagined that he could store this kind of venom inside himself. I knew if I stayed there a second longer, I would do something I would regret.

Or perhaps it was fear. Fear of being portrayed exactly as Han was trying to frame me as: the irrational, violent Muslim male. And so, without answering his question, I turned my back on him and walked away.

I was so mad and so on edge that I tried to stay away from everybody the entire day. For some reason, Ron didn’t call me for anything either, so it was relatively easy to disappear within the frenzied atmosphere of the campaign. I thought a lot about what Han had said and, the more I thought about it, the madder I got.

The prick was right about one thing. Ron wasn’t a child. Nobody, least of all Han, could dupe him into saying something like that. Either Ron believed some part of this crazy allegation, or he had said it for political advantage, with deliberate disregard for any consequences. Either way, that put me in a very difficult position. If I didn’t do something, I was in danger of becoming the Muslim Uncle Tom of the Diamond campaign.

Excerpted with permission from The Election by Omar Shahid Hamid, published by Liberty Publishing

The author is a novelist and a police officer in the Pakistan Police Service. His previous novels include, The Prisoner, The Fix, The Party Worker, and The Spinner’s Tale, amongst others

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 26th, 2025