It all
started one afternoon a few years ago. I was driving down the New Jersey
Turnpike, thinking about ideas for my next novel when a black Lincoln limousine
zipped by. Tinted windows hid the passenger, the chauffeur wore a peaked cap
and a vanity license plate proclaimed, ‘SINGH IS KING’.
This was
new to me. Indians in America are discreet professionals—doctors, techies,
engineers—but here was a person proudly proclaiming his wealth to the world. As
a novelist, this image stuck in my mind. Who was Mr. Singh? Where did his money
come from? Why was he so confident?
The
stories written about Indian immigrants tend to stay within familiar themes: The
loss of culture. Painful assimilation into the American mainstream.
Generational conflict. Arranged marriages. Curry.
The guy in
the Lincoln was different. He was rich. He was badass, and he wanted the world
to know it.
Slowly, over
the next few months, the shadowy figure in the back of the limousine took on more
definition. In my imagination he became Abbas Khan, an Indian immigrant who
arrived in America in the 1970s and built his real-estate empire from scratch.
He was a canny, hard-nosed businessman, a bazaar merchant who knew how to
manipulate people. Now he had made it in America and was redeveloping a large
swathe of Manhattan.
As Abbas
Khan came to life, I found I was having a really good time. Oh, the joy of
writing a bad Indian. The freedom of it.
As a
novelist, my protagonists so far had been honourable, good people stuck in bad
situations. Abbas Khan was different: He was a monster who hid his insecure,
angry self behind an armour of fine British tailoring. Abbas had been forced
into an arranged marriage, but instead of freeing his own two adult daughters,
he pushed them into arranged marriages. To protect the reputation of his real
estate company he hid a shameful link to a serial killer who’d terrorized New
York City a decade ago.
It was fun
to create a dark, manipulative character—but then an odd thing happened: I
began to like Abbas. Yes, he was awful to his wife and adult daughters, but he
was human too. He had made a ton of money, but as a Muslim man, he was not
really accepted into New York elite society.
So Abbas
made his own world. He bought an abandoned 1920’s estate on Long Island, painstakingly
restored it to its former glory, and staffed it with faithful Indian servants.
Like any immigrant, he tried to root himself into the New World by replicating
the familiar.
And once I
got a taste for writing bad Indians, I couldn’t stop.
Abbas is
searching for a husband for his beloved younger daughter, but he forgoes the
eligible young Muslim men with MBAs, and instead settles on Ali Azeem, a
slacker from Mumbai. He does this because Ali is malleable, but also because
Ali comes from the Old Country, like Abbas himself, and the two men develop an
oddly affectionate bond.
There was
also Farhan, Abbas’s older daughter, who once had been the apple of his eye. Now
in her thirties, Farhan is a mess, and of course she acts out. And as I
developed my novel, I created more members of the Khan family: insecure,
backstabbing, jockeying for position.
As a
novelist, I had learned an important lesson. I’d previously thought I should
write ‘likable’ protagonists with honesty and integrity—but it was so much more
interesting to write flawed, messy, contradictory characters. The trick was to make
them human and recognizable: “There for the grace of God go I.”
Another
thing I discovered as a novelist was that plot, instead of being an external
situation imposed on the characters, could grow out of the contradictions and
complexities of the characters themselves: Abbas, while trying to maintain his
hard-won reputation, suppressed information that would come back to destroy
him. Ali wanted to take a shortcut to wealth, ended up marrying into a family
he did not understand, and was forced to lose his naivety. Farhan’s self-destructiveness
reached new levels. And while creating characters who were glorious messes, I
found that I could hide the motivations of one of the quieter, staid
characters, who turned out to be the real ‘killer in the family’.
Now that I
finished writing ‘A Killer in the Family’, I’m on to my next novel. And guess
what? It’s full of bad Indians. It turns out that once you discover the joy of
writing monstrous characters, there is no going back.
A Killer
in the Family by Amin Ahmad (Cornerstone) Out Now
Good-natured but naïve, Mumbai party boy Ali Azeem is drifting through life. Then he meets the Khan sisters: pretty, marriage-material Maryam and sexy, unpredictable, off-the-rails Farhan. They are the daughters of Abbas Khan, the formidable immigrant patriarch of a glittering property empire, who has succeeded in making New York City his playground. Ali finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the Khan family’s seductive world of private jets and towering skyscrapers. He begins to uncover rumours of affairs, accusations of corruption – and a troubling connection to the serial killer who once stalked the streets of Manhattan. As he closes in on the truth and learns the cost of the Khans' unattainable wealth and power, Ali must decide: is it a price worth paying?
More information about Amin Ahmad
can be found on his website. He
can also be found on Instagram @aminahmadbooks
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