The spiritual practice of empathy is desperately needed in our world where terrorism and the responses to it have brought large doses of fear and violence into daily life. Novelists are able to build bridges to people we might otherwise consider to be enemies. That is exactly what John Updike does in his twenty-second novel.
Ahmad Mulloy is the son of an Egyptian father who left home when the boy was three and an Irish-American mother. Now at eighteen, he is a senior at New Prospect High in New Jersey. Ahmed turned to Islam when he was eleven; his Imam has advised him not to attend college but to become a truck driver. The boy does not want to further contaminate himself with the Godless western culture of hedonism and materialism. He is a zealous believer who takes his faith seriously and, as a result, is a loner with no friends. Although he in not interested in women's devilish ways, he is fascinated with Joyleen Grant, a black classmate who sings in a church choir.
Jack Levy, a burnt-out guidance counselor at New Prospect High who is unhappily married, wants Ahmed to get a college degree. Meeting the boy's mother, Terry, a painter who works as a nurse's aid, he begins an affair with her. Meanwhile, Ahmed starts fraternizing with a family of recently immigrated Lebanese who hate America and what it stands for. They feed Ahmed's religious obsession with self-sacrifice and martyrdom. But Jack Levy continues to believe that the boy is not a "Hopeless Case."
Updike lets us peer into the heart and mind of this would-be suicide bomber. This story doesn't make for easy or comfortable reading. But the practice of empathy is a crucially needed skill in our polarized world of clashing religious fundamentalisms. True peace requires a new level of understanding and compassion.
