Moth Smoke

The importance of names in Moth Smoke cannot be overstated: The names of the main characters all have historical resonance, and in their very identities their destinies are writ large. Darashikoh, Daru’s given name, was the moniker of Shah Jahan’s oldest son, whose head was served to his father by his youngest son, Aurangzeb, Ozi’s namesake. Murad and Shuja were Shah Jahan’s other sons, and the novel duly provides a Murad, who functions as Daru’s drug dealer and partner in crime, and a Shuja, whose youthful cowardice leads to the ferocious beating of Daru. Thus, do all of these contemporary characters carry within their names the destinies of their 17th-century Mughal Empire counterparts. In providing his characters with such resonant names, the author suggests that his tale, while set among the social climbers of 1990s Pakistan, is epic in scope, comparable to the exploits of the legendary emperors of previous centuries.

Darashikoh, a name associated with the great Persian emperor Darius, meets a tragic end at the hands of his brother, who labeled him an apostate. While the reader never learns the specific fate of Daru in the novel—the verdict at the trial is never handed down—it is clear that Daru’s life spirals in a downward direction.