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Novel Based On 9/11 Attacks Is Well Written, But Avoids Issues
By Barbara Murphy
Contributing Writer
Amy Waldman’s new novel “The Submission” has been widely acclaimed as a epic and extraordinary work. It has been called “a wrenching panoramic novel about the politics of grief in the wake of 9/11” and “the 9/11 novel.”
There’s good cause for all this acclaim. Ms. Waldman is a brilliant writer and she tells a gripping tale of what happens when a man named Mohammed Kahn wins an architectural contest for the design of a memorial to those who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City’s World Trade Center.
The architectural submissions to the jury of prominent New Yorkers who decide on the winner are anonymous. Since the jurors do not know who designed any of the memorials, they must make their choice on the design alone.
As the novel opens, the contest has been narrowed down to two designs. One is called “The Void” and features a 12-story high black granite rectangle. The other semi-finalist is Kahn’s “The Garden,” a walled rectangular living garden surrounding a memorial pavilion and featuring two broad canals. “The Garden” would contain both living and steel trees, the latter to be made from metal scraps salvaged from the fallen towers of the World Trade Center.
After an intense argument, “The Garden” garners the winning vote largely because of the passionate advocacy of Claire Burwell, the only family member on the panel. She lost her husband Cal, father of her two young children, when the towers fell.
Only after their vote is cast and “The Garden” is proclaimed the winner do the jurors learn that its designer is a man named Mohammed Kahn, a native born American but the son of Muslim immigrants from India.
When the winner’s identity becomes public, all hell breaks loose, even though “Mo,” as he is known by his friends, doesn’t practice Islam and in fact isn’t sure if he believes in God. Mo is consumed by only one thing and that is ambition.
But none of this saves him from the people, who become immersed in the politics of grief. One of these people is Sean Gallagher, whose brother Patrick was a 9/11 victim. Sean hadn’t made much of his life until the selection of Kahn’s design gave him a cause to live for. He becomes one of the most belligerent and outspoken critics of a “Muslim” design for the 9/11 memorial. The fight had hardly began before numerous opponents were denouncing Kahn’s design as actually “an Islamic garden” conceived as a martyrs’ paradise — the martyrs being the 9/11 hijackers.
Sean is loud and belligerent in supporting this view, but he is out-shouted by a blogger named Debbie Dawson, who not only conducts her own strident campaign against the Garden, its designer and Islam, but also organizes a small army of zealots who join her crusade. At one point, Debbie not only denounces Mohammed Kahn but the Prophet Mohammed himself.
New York’s governor Geraldine Bitman deftly exploits the “politics of grief” to advance her own political career. Eventually, she becomes the nation’s vice president.
Another crusader against Kahn is a right wing radio host named Lou Sarge, but the biggest villain of the piece is a reporter named Alyssa Speier (which is an interesting development considering author Amy Waldman was a prominent journalist before writing The Submission). Alyssa digs up one shovel-full of dirt after the other in pursuit of the big scoop but her most heinous act is outing a Bangladeshi woman named Asma Anwar as an illegal alien.
If The Submission has a hero it is Asma, who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks. Asma defies her culture and the advice of her protector to give an impassioned speech in favor of Kahn’s design at a public hearing.
After she is outed as an illegal alien, Asma has no option but to return to Bangladesh. As she is making her way down the street in front of her home with her belongings and young son Abdul at her side, she is stabbed to death by someone in the huge crowd that gathered to witness her departure. We never learn who killed Asma or why.
The Submission is brilliantly written. No one who picks up the book will put it down. But I have some problems with it. One is what I see as the author’s failure to empathize with any of the people who are horrified and angered by the thought of a Muslim designing the 9/11 memorial. The opponents are all portrayed as mindless bigots, none as grief-stricken and frightened people who were shaken to the core by the horror and evil of the attack undertaken in the name of God.
It will take a lot of time and reflection until many Americans become convinced that most Muslim are gentle and peaceful and not murderous crazies like the bunch that flew the planes into the towers.
The other problem is actually a disappointment. Ms. Waldman is a good writer but The Submission is not in my estimation “the” 9/11 novel because it does not take on the big question — why did they do it?
Why did Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers slam airplanes into the World Trade Center towers with the aim of killing thousands of innocent people — many of them Muslims — and themselves? Why do people who profess to love God kill in his name?
This is hardly a new question. People have been killing each other in the name of God since the dawn of history. Catholics slew Protestants, Protestants slew Catholics, Christian crusaders slew Muslims, Muslims slew Christians and on and on. Religion is waist deep in blood. Why is that? How did religion twist the minds of seemingly normal Saudis and Egyptians and turn them into the mass murderers of 9/11.
Ms. Waldman, a Brooklyn, NY resident and former co-chief of The New York Times’ South Asia bureau, is only 42. The Submission is her first novel. Let’s hope her second deals with the questions I have raised. That would be “the” novel of 9/11. Ms. Waldman has the talent and intellect to write it.
*
(The Submission by Amy Waldman, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY; 2011, 299 pages, $26.)
By Barbara Murphy
Contributing Writer
Amy Waldman’s new novel “The Submission” has been widely acclaimed as a epic and extraordinary work. It has been called “a wrenching panoramic novel about the politics of grief in the wake of 9/11” and “the 9/11 novel.”
There’s good cause for all this acclaim. Ms. Waldman is a brilliant writer and she tells a gripping tale of what happens when a man named Mohammed Kahn wins an architectural contest for the design of a memorial to those who died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City’s World Trade Center.
The architectural submissions to the jury of prominent New Yorkers who decide on the winner are anonymous. Since the jurors do not know who designed any of the memorials, they must make their choice on the design alone.
As the novel opens, the contest has been narrowed down to two designs. One is called “The Void” and features a 12-story high black granite rectangle. The other semi-finalist is Kahn’s “The Garden,” a walled rectangular living garden surrounding a memorial pavilion and featuring two broad canals. “The Garden” would contain both living and steel trees, the latter to be made from metal scraps salvaged from the fallen towers of the World Trade Center.
After an intense argument, “The Garden” garners the winning vote largely because of the passionate advocacy of Claire Burwell, the only family member on the panel. She lost her husband Cal, father of her two young children, when the towers fell.
Only after their vote is cast and “The Garden” is proclaimed the winner do the jurors learn that its designer is a man named Mohammed Kahn, a native born American but the son of Muslim immigrants from India.
When the winner’s identity becomes public, all hell breaks loose, even though “Mo,” as he is known by his friends, doesn’t practice Islam and in fact isn’t sure if he believes in God. Mo is consumed by only one thing and that is ambition.
But none of this saves him from the people, who become immersed in the politics of grief. One of these people is Sean Gallagher, whose brother Patrick was a 9/11 victim. Sean hadn’t made much of his life until the selection of Kahn’s design gave him a cause to live for. He becomes one of the most belligerent and outspoken critics of a “Muslim” design for the 9/11 memorial. The fight had hardly began before numerous opponents were denouncing Kahn’s design as actually “an Islamic garden” conceived as a martyrs’ paradise — the martyrs being the 9/11 hijackers.
Sean is loud and belligerent in supporting this view, but he is out-shouted by a blogger named Debbie Dawson, who not only conducts her own strident campaign against the Garden, its designer and Islam, but also organizes a small army of zealots who join her crusade. At one point, Debbie not only denounces Mohammed Kahn but the Prophet Mohammed himself.
New York’s governor Geraldine Bitman deftly exploits the “politics of grief” to advance her own political career. Eventually, she becomes the nation’s vice president.
Another crusader against Kahn is a right wing radio host named Lou Sarge, but the biggest villain of the piece is a reporter named Alyssa Speier (which is an interesting development considering author Amy Waldman was a prominent journalist before writing The Submission). Alyssa digs up one shovel-full of dirt after the other in pursuit of the big scoop but her most heinous act is outing a Bangladeshi woman named Asma Anwar as an illegal alien.
If The Submission has a hero it is Asma, who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks. Asma defies her culture and the advice of her protector to give an impassioned speech in favor of Kahn’s design at a public hearing.
After she is outed as an illegal alien, Asma has no option but to return to Bangladesh. As she is making her way down the street in front of her home with her belongings and young son Abdul at her side, she is stabbed to death by someone in the huge crowd that gathered to witness her departure. We never learn who killed Asma or why.
The Submission is brilliantly written. No one who picks up the book will put it down. But I have some problems with it. One is what I see as the author’s failure to empathize with any of the people who are horrified and angered by the thought of a Muslim designing the 9/11 memorial. The opponents are all portrayed as mindless bigots, none as grief-stricken and frightened people who were shaken to the core by the horror and evil of the attack undertaken in the name of God.
It will take a lot of time and reflection until many Americans become convinced that most Muslim are gentle and peaceful and not murderous crazies like the bunch that flew the planes into the towers.
The other problem is actually a disappointment. Ms. Waldman is a good writer but The Submission is not in my estimation “the” 9/11 novel because it does not take on the big question — why did they do it?
Why did Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers slam airplanes into the World Trade Center towers with the aim of killing thousands of innocent people — many of them Muslims — and themselves? Why do people who profess to love God kill in his name?
This is hardly a new question. People have been killing each other in the name of God since the dawn of history. Catholics slew Protestants, Protestants slew Catholics, Christian crusaders slew Muslims, Muslims slew Christians and on and on. Religion is waist deep in blood. Why is that? How did religion twist the minds of seemingly normal Saudis and Egyptians and turn them into the mass murderers of 9/11.
Ms. Waldman, a Brooklyn, NY resident and former co-chief of The New York Times’ South Asia bureau, is only 42. The Submission is her first novel. Let’s hope her second deals with the questions I have raised. That would be “the” novel of 9/11. Ms. Waldman has the talent and intellect to write it.
*
(The Submission by Amy Waldman, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY; 2011, 299 pages, $26.)