The radicalization of an American-Iranian teenager living along the Southern California coast (2011 to 2014): A Good Country is like no other novel I’ve blogged about. Maybe like no other novel you’ve read.

It couldn’t be more timely and forceful in its quest for answers to compelling questions. How does a fun-seeking, peace-loving, advantaged American-Iranian teenager, Rez Courdee, living in a place some would call God’s country, become radicalized?

If you’re looking for a single, definitive moment to pinpoint when and why that happens you won’t find it here. It’s unrealistic, complex issues not easy to define. What you will find are themes, circumstances, and a series of events – everyday and catastrophic – that culminate in the fate Rez chooses. The novel’s strength resides in its authenticity, its frank depiction of a privileged teenager’s life in long, flowing prose that manages to be brutally honest and poetically tender at the same time.

Rez’s transformation is at odds with our perceptions of a kid who has a lot going for him, thus his changes-of-heart are even more confounding and provocative. An academic star, a chess player. That spells nerdy and isolating in a teen’s world, worsened by Rez feeling alienated at home. So, if you’ve been hanging out with three rich, pushing-the-limits friends since eighth grade and you’re an only child longing for a brother, yearning “to be inside the circle,” acceptance by your peers is all the more seductive.

When the novel opens we begin to see Rez’s persona vacillating. He’s a rising junior at a tony prep school in Laguna Beach, an exclusive enclave of spectacular homes hugging the southern California coast with its breathtaking views and legendary surfing culture. This is not the SoCal surfing culture made famous by the Beach Boys in the sixties. This music is “anger and confusion.”

Laguna Beach, by Patrick Pelster [CC BY-SA 3.0 de], via Wikimedia Commons

Just as the lyrics resonate with these kids, the prose grabs us. It sings along naturally, uninterrupted by removing all quotation marks. An interesting technique as dialogue is plentiful and not watered down, so we’re constantly hit with angst and “aimless rage.” Rez, of course, caves in to his friends’ taunts, soon also getting high on drugs and sex and yes, surfing. Which we wish will be the buffer, the savior for the path Rez seems headed for. Sadly, it’s not.

Rez’s journey starts off when he’s still a good and dutiful son to his horribly strict father, Sal, a physically violent and emotionally abusive “tyrant without a cause.” His mother has no power in this family, painfully docile, quietly cooking the “oldest food in the world.” She’s not even allowed to have her friends over to their house, so her presence for Rez and us is minimal. Its Rez’s father, whom he’s rightfully scared of, he needs to escape from. Plus, he’s terribly lonesome and bored at home, more reasons to escape. Which he does, with “diversions.”

The novel is divided into three parts. In Part I, Rez seeks the companionship of the small band of “brothers” mentioned above, nicknamed the Apostles because their names come from the Bible – Peter, James, John. When he realizes they aren’t brotherly, we find him in Part II befriending a different group. Arash and Fatima, childhood friends, have families in Syria. They become dedicated to the teachings of Islam. At first, Rez dismisses their piety, their praying at mosques. But as their faithfulness deepens, he wants to understand the peace and brotherhood they worship. A developmental process, once again influenced by his peers, maturing in Part III.

Rez is continually searching for his identity, asking how many “selves” does a person have?  How to be whole? “How to become a man?”

Laleh Khadevi was a human rights documentarian before she became an award-winning novelist. Iranian-American, she teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco. So while A Good Country is fictional, her daring filmography turns into daring prose. Her lens now shines a glaring light on, and coincides with, the rise in terrorism and anti-Muslim sentiments after 9/11. In fact, the novel tracks seasons, opening in the fall of 2011.

A recent article on social class in America by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout offers some food for thought on the theme of powerlessness. She quotes a friend who teaches about the working-class, who told her: “it may be more helpful to think about class not in terms of education level or income level, but in terms of the sense of power that people feel over their lives.”

Feeling appreciated/in-control of your life versus vilified/marginalized may help account for why Rez (Arash and Fatima) are feeling increasingly culturally estranged as resentment towards Muslims heats up. As it does, this intense novel intensifies. Rez falls madly in love with beautiful Fatima, along with an “end-of-the-world tone” propelling him.

One visible way it manifests is surfing. There’s a shift in Rez’s elation with the “fantastic wind” and the “cool water on his skin” to something more profound and troubling. Palpably, his desperation is sharpening. “In the water everything was good again” but when Rez comes up for air he’s still faced with the fallout after the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and the Costa Mesa shopping mall attacks.

The most cringe-worthy anti-Muslim sentiments occur at an airport scene when Rez is returning home from Indonesia. An extravagant graduation gift from his father who is now meeker, shamed by his acts of betrayal towards his son and shamed by a demotion at Merck Labs where he’d been Head Scientist.

Pulled aside by security – racial profiling right before our literary eyes – a guard admits to Rez: “we saw your name, your travel destination, your smart-ass attitude, and thought we’d tell you what is at stake.” He goes on to say:

“… your people, who think they are worth a great deal, know that even after making all that money, they are worthless. Their children are worthless, and if this violence continues, their children’s children will be worthless too. The American dream will never play all the way out for you. Do you understand?”

Rather than get outraged, Rez believes “the man was not wrong.” To stay calm, he thinks about the mosque he just visited, welcomed by the iman and brothers. Brotherhood – there it is – the attraction though not necessarily the turning point moment.

Khadivi is never judgmental. She lets the facts speak for themselves. Let’s us form our own opinions, like a gifted documentarian does.

A gifted writer too. For I didn’t even know A Good Country was the last installment in her Kurdish trilogy, spanning three generations of Rez’s family: his Iranian grandfather debuted in The Age of Orphans; his Iranian-American father in The Walking. Obviously, the novel stands well alone, although you can’t help but want to backtrack to gain further insight into Rez’s father’s upbringing to contemplate the impact of those cultural threads.

Isn’t it ironic, heartbreaking and heart-lifting, that the largest population of Muslims in this country – in Texas, a quarter of a million in Houston alone – risked their lives and opened up their mosques to save Americans during Hurricane Harvey?

When will our good country save itself? Become good and whole again?

Lorraine

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