American Dervish

Plagued by misfortune, Mina, the best friend of Hayat’s mother, maintains a mysterious inner strength throughout her life.

Mina attempts to live freely, unencumbered by controlling forces like her father and her ex-husband. Her life in America sees changes in her career, her Westernized appearance, and her personal life as she pursues a marriage forbidden in her native Pakistan. She and Nathan bond over a mutual love of literature and respect for the other’s intelligence and compassion. However, she is caught between Pakistani culture, with its restrictive treatment of women, and the freedom of America. She considers the force of cultural expectations and decides to end her relationship with Nathan and marry an abusive man she does not love.

Mina models her faith after Sufi Muslims, mystics who traditionally value intimate devotion to God as the highest spiritual pursuit. As Mina prepares to marry Sunil, she cries to Hayat, saying, “The Sufi is just someone who doesn’t fight [life]. He knows that being ground to nothing is not bad. It’s the way to God” (274). This mindset remains throughout a painful breakup, an abusive marriage, and terminal cancer, as Hayat learns at Mina’s deathbed. 

As an adult, Hayat not only observes the tension between Mina’s seemingly contradictory choices, but also he questions the spiritual philosophy that excuses other people’s sins against her. Mina tells him that even her suffering brings her close to God, so it is not in vain. During the events of the Prologue in 1990, Mina dies of uterine cancer. 

The irritable, proud, and distant father of Hayat, Naveed is a combative force throughout the novel. He and his wife bicker constantly, and he makes little attempt to hide his affairs with white women or his heavy drinking. A successful neurologist, Naveed has pioneered MRI technology with his best friend Nathan. Naveed avoids other Pakistani-Americans in Milwaukee and, when confronted by them, insults their outmoded traditions and intolerant beliefs. Muneer laments that even when the married couple experiences a rare intimate moment, the critical Naveed compares her conservative habits to the more liberated behavior of his mistresses. 

Naveed welcomes Mina and Imran into his home and dotes on the young boy. In Mina, he finds a surrogate sister, even referencing her similarities with the sister he lost. Hayat deeply resents his father for making his mother suffer, for sinning by drinking alcohol and having affairs, and for showing favoritism to little Imran. The tension between father and son reaches its height when Naveed burns the copy of the Quran that Mina gave Hayat, mocking the burning book as “Just paper […] Couldn’t save my sister. And it can’t save itself.” (249). This reveals that.

Naveed reveals a measure of self-knowledge and wisdom after Mina’s wedding. He acknowledges his fraught relationship with his family while also defending his rejection of religion—the force he believes has failed to protect his sister, brought harm to Mina, to his best friend, and to his son.  

Hayat’s mother Muneer is talkative, harried, passionate, and fiercely loyal. She begins the novel betrayed and enraged at her husband’s infidelities, venting her frustrations to her young son. After one of Naveed’s “‘white prostitutes’” (26), as she calls them, sets his car on fire, she leverages this incident to invite her best friend from Pakistan to stay with their family in Milwaukee. Mina brings new life to Muneer, with whom she shares a sisterly relationship, full of joy, intimacy, and occasional bickering. 

A former psychology student, Muneer often quotes Freud to her son and tells him repeatedly to not be like other Muslim men who don’t respect women. She implores Hayat, “‘You’re going to be a good Muslim. But you’ll treat women right, won’t you, behta? You’ll be the exception… a good Muslim man who has respect for a woman, no?’” (159). She wants to prevent Hayat from causing the same kind of pain she has experienced with Naveed. 

Muneer also has an unusual fascination with Jewish culture, visiting a kosher butcher and celebrating Yom Kippur with her family. She encourages Mina’s romance with a Jewish man, chaperoning their times together and strategizing with her best friend about appeasing her conservative parents. Once Mina prepares to marry Sunil instead, Muneer becomes depressed. Muneer’s deep connection to Mina causes her extraordinary pain once she learns that Sunil is abusing her friend.  

Naveed’s psychologist partner and best friend is Dr. Nathan Wolfsohn. Upon seeing Mina at the Shahs’ barbecue, Nathan is entranced with her beauty and intelligence. Short and prone to awkwardness, Nathan attracts Mina with “a warmth and expansiveness you could spy from the joyous, jagged glint in his eyes” (83). 

A Jewish man with relatives who died in the Holocaust, Nathan decides to convert to Islam so he can marry Mina. He studies the Quran and finds beauty in the religion. However, when Nathan pursues acceptance among the Muslim-Americans in his community, he is shocked to find that many of them are bigoted anti-Semites. His father’s warning—“No one will ever see you as anything other than a Jew” (178)—foreshadows a hateful experience at the mosque, which precipitates his breakup with Mina. As an adult, Hayat finds out that Nathan wrote letters to Mina, whom he calls “‘the love of my life’” (349), for years after their separation. 

Imran is the four-year-old son of Mina and her imperious ex-husband Hamed. Imran is obsessed with his father and other Pakistani men he encounters. Moving into the Shahs’ home gives Imran surrogate father in Naveed, who “use[s] the term of endearment ‘kurban’ for Imran” (47). Imran also attaches himself to Hayat, who initially resists treating the boy as a younger brother.

Imran throws tantrums whenever Nathan spends time with his mother. Eventually Nathan makes tacit peace with the boy, although he resists the idea of having a white father. Hayat observes Imran’s intelligence as he teaches the younger boy to play chess, and Imran takes to heart Hayat’s solemn command “‘to remember this moment right now’” (166). Conversely, Imran immediately treats Sunil like a father, which convinces Mina to go through with the marriage. 

Adnan Souhef is the imam, or religious leader, at the Islamic Center on Molaskey Hill in Milwaukee. Naveed resists and Hayat comes to embrace his orthodox approach to Islam. Souhef appears friendly but masks rapacious greed, intolerant severity, and vitriolic anti-Semitic hatred.

Chatha is a prominent leader in the local Muslim-American community who domineer others. Chatha uses the Quran to justify hate against Jewish people and physical abuse against his wife Najat, to the horror of characters like Muneer and Sonny Buledi. Naveed accuses Chatha of hypocrisy, since he uses interest (forbidden in the Quran) to finance his successful pharmacy business while complaining about non-Muslims doing the same. Chatha facilitates the marriage between Mina and his cousin Sunil and cuts out the more liberal Shahs from participating in the wedding preparations. 

Mina connects with Sunil, Chatha’s cousin, over their shared history of divorce. Hayat compares Sunil to a rodent and notices how he phrases his sentences as questions. Sunil resembles Mina’s father Rafiq in appearance and in his attempts to control Mina. Like his cousin, Sunil has maintained a patriarchal, ultra-conservative worldview in America. After they marry, Sunil abuses Mina physically, emotionally, and verbally. His final appearance in the novel sees him broken and repentant for his wrongdoing against her.