Janissaries explained in the book ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’

Posted on October 25, 2015 Updated on October 25, 2015

Juan-Bautista wore a hat and carried a walking stick, and he ambled at a pace so slow that it would likely have been illegal for him to cross at an intersection in New York. When we were seated and he had ordered on our behalf, he said, “I have been observing you, and I think it is no exaggeration to say, young man, that you seem upset. May I ask you a rather personal question?” “Certainly,” I said. “Does it trouble you,” he inquired, “to make your living by disrupting the lives of others?” “We just value,” I replied. “We do not decide whether to buy or to sell, or indeed what happens to a company after we have valued
it.” He nodded; he lit a cigarette and took a sip from his glass of wine.

Then he asked, “Have you heard of the janissaries?”  “No,” I said. “They were Christian boys,” he explained, “captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, at that time the greatest army in the world. They were ferocious and utterly loyal: they had fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to turn to.”
He tipped the ash of his cigarette onto a plate. “How old were you when you went to America?” he asked. “I went for college,” I said. “I was eighteen.” “Ah, much older,” he said. “The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget.” He smiled and speculated no further on the subject. Our food arrived shortly thereafter and the sea bass may well have been as splendid as he had claimed; unfortunately, I can no longer recall its taste.

But your expression, sir, tells me that you think something is amiss. Did this conversation really happen, you ask? For that matter, did this so-called Juan-Bautista even exist? I assure you, sir: you can trust me. I am not in the habit of inventing untruths! And moreover, even if I were, there is no reason why this incident would be more likely to be false than any of the others I have related to you. Come, come, I believe we have passed through too much together to begin to raise questions of this nature at so late a stage.

In any case, Juan-Bautista’s words plunged me into a deep bout of introspection. I spent that night considering what I had become. There really could be no doubt: I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding to ensure that my own country faced the threat of war. Of course I was struggling! Of course I felt torn! I had thrown in my lot with the men of Underwood Samson, with the officers of the empire, when all along I was predisposed to feel compassion for those, like Juan-Bautista, whose lives the empire thought nothing of overturning for its own gain.

In the morning, with the demeanor of a man facing a firing squad—no, that is perhaps too dramatic, and a dangerous comparison on this of all evenings, but you understand my intent—I told the vice president that I refused to work any further. He was baffled. “What do you mean, refuse?” he said. “I am clone here,” I replied. “I intend to return to New York.” Panic ensued; a conference call with Jim was hastily arranged. “Look, kid,” an uncharacteristically tense Jim said over the speakerphone, “I know you have stuff on your mind. But if you walk out on this now you undermine our firm. You hurt your team. In wartime soldiers don’t really fight for their flags, Changez.