The great uncooled

>> Moth Smoke is sweltering Pakistani noir

by JULIET WATERS

"There are two social classes in Pakistan," Professor Julius Superb explains one afternoon to an auditorium of students. "The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource: air-conditioning..."

Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, follows the plight of Daru Shezad as he descends from heights of the cooled to become a denizen of the great uncooled. Superb's thesis will eventually be introduced as evidence when Daru is tried for murder. And while this seems to be the one attempt at satire in an otherwise dark, humourless experiment in noir, there's clearly an element of truth to the theory. In a country plagued with the politics of partition, the division between those who have the technology to live like cloistered Westerners and those who don't is an extra layer of political hostility.

On a literal level, Moth Smoke is an old-fashioned tale of repressed jealousy between two friends, Daru and Ozi, raised almost as brothers. On a metaphoric level, set in 1998 as the nuclear one-upmanship between Pakistan and India escalates, Moth Smoke has subtle traces of a political fable. The title comes from an image of a moth so in love with a flame that it keeps flinging itself into a candle until it combusts. An image that alludes to several facets of this story: Pakistan's destructive fascination with nuclear technology, Daru's obsession with the shallow world of Lahore's cellphone-and-sushi crowd and particularly with his best friend's wife, Mumtaz.

Daru has been brought into the lifestyle of the rich and obvious at a young age. Ozi's father, Khurram, a corrupt money launderer, took him under his wing after Daru's father, a war buddy, died in action. Khurram sends the very bright Daru to the best private schools in Pakistan. But when it comes time to go to university, it is the very rich Ozi who gets to go to the U.S., while Daru has to stay behind. Daru develops a reputation as a brilliant graduate student in economics. While he shows all the potential of having a soul--specializing in the study of micro-loans to the poor--when Khurram arranges a well paying position at a bank for him, Daru abandons his PhD thesis.

Meanwhile Ozi has married the beautiful and sophisticated Mumtaz in New York. When Mumtaz becomes restless, partly out of guilt at her lack of maternal feelings for their toddler son, they return to Lahore. It seems that Ozi has barely arrived before Daru starts to self-destruct. He gets fired from his job at the bank. Gets his air conditioning cut off when he can't find another job. Starts dealing drugs and brutally mistreating the servant he hasn't paid in months. When he starts an affair with Mumtaz, thereby entirely cutting himself off from any help his affluent friend can give him, his fate is sealed.

Hamid is a fluid writer, with wonderful gifts for atmosphere and drama. But it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain any sympathy for the self-hating Daru. Through the voices of other characters--Superb, Mumtaz and Daru's dealer--we are told of the potential goodness of Daru's character. But Daru himself, who narrates most of the book, shows little self-awareness, or interest in having any. When the novel hints at redemption, it seems a trite and tacked-on device. In the end, reading Daru's tragic tale is very much like watching a moth flinging itself over and over again into a flame. It's sad and beautiful in a bleak, elemental way, but still mysteriously stupid.

Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, hc, 247pp, $37