American Dervish

As Mina orients Hayat to her Sufic practice of Islam, she emphasizes the word intention. When she teaches him to pray to Allah, she says, “Always imagine him close to you when you pray […] If you think of Him as near, then that’s where you will find Him. And if you think of Him as far away, then that’s where He will be” (65). Modeling his faith after Mina’s, Hayat develops an intention-focused prayer practice as his religious faith deepens. He considers the character of God as he prays on his own behalf and on behalf of others. 

However, as Hayat’s faith takes on a more orthodox tone, he begins questioning the intentions of others. When Nathan begins converting to Islam, Hayat wonders, “Does he really believe?” (156). Hayat’s skepticism is ironic in the face of his own hypocrisy: his actions stem from his strong jealousy for Mina’s affection. Disappointed that by memorizing the Quran in English rather than Arabic means he is not a hafiz, Hayat reveals how he has prioritized this title over absorbing the meaning of the words he has learned.

Amidst his crisis of conscience after betraying Mina, Hayat tries to return to intentionality, seeking closeness with God in prayer once again by repeating: “I give myself to You” (260). Mina sustains her intention to be with God through extraordinary hardship and, at the end of her life, still sees herself as a vessel of divine will, revealing an authentic and lasting intention.  

Telegrams, an inexpensive form of overseas communication, symbolize the characters’ connections between Pakistan and America. The two telegrams Mina and Muneer exchange at the beginning of the novel herald the joyful arrival of Mina in the United States. Muneer’s reply to Mina connects her excitement with her faith: “CABLE RECEIVED STOP SO EXCITED STOP INSHALLAH” (32). 

A later telegram will change their lives irrevocably, as Hayat, conspiring to keep Nathan and Mina apart, sends a telegram to keep Mina to himself. Here, another religious term is invoked, but this time with menace and threat: “MINA MARRYING A KAFR STOP HIS NAME IS NATHAN” (240). This telegram, an emblem of Hayat’s torturous guilt and shame, will remain with him until his college years.  

The evolution of Mina’s appearance symbolizes the arc of her journey in America. Hayat first experiences the woman’s physical beauty through a photograph: “[T]hose eyes were black and filled with piercing light, as if her vision had long been sharpened against the grindstone of some nameless inner pain” (18). Mina’s outward expression evolves in America. From wearing tighter-fitting Western clothing, to using makeup, to drastically changing her hair, Mina relishes the freedom to shed the aesthetics of her former life. For Hayat, “Her fashionable hairstyle made her a modern woman, an American woman, an astonishing prospect to folks like us who never would have thought we could look like that” (69). 

After Mina’s breakup with Nathan and her engagement to Sunil, a man she does not love, she rapidly loses weight until she looks unhealthy—in the eyes of her father, “Our daughter looks like a bag of bones!” (278). Her marriage to the controlling, abusive Sunil sees Mina covering up her body by wearing traditional Muslim garments like a hijab. Later, as Sunil becomes more possessive, he forces her to wear a chador, which covers all parts of the body except the face. 

One of Mina’s nightly stories for Hayat features the parable of a dervish. Hayat is fascinated—and confused—by the story of the man who gave up his home, his family, and his dignity to pursue closeness with Allah. Mina explains, “What the dervish found was true humility. He realized he was no better, no worse than the ground itself, the ground that takes the discarded orange peels of the world” (103). Mina lives out this truth as she experiences heartbreak, fear, and humiliation over the course of the novel. 

Echoing the story of the dervish, Muneer describes Sunil’s abuse of Mina: “‘He’s going to drive her into the ground’” (331). Throughout Mina’s suffering, she holds fast to God. At the end of the novel, as she dies of cancer, she tells college-aged Hayat about another dervish, the mystic Chishti, and proclaims “that everything, everything is an expression of Allah’s will. It is all His glory. Even the pain” (343). Mina is the dervish of the novel’s title, truly humble, using all circumstances as an opportunity to know God.