Haider frames the narrative of Rama’s “journey,” “education,” and “home,” by referencing Gone with the Wind at the beginning and end of the novel. This reference evokes the scene of Scarlett O’Hara clutching the dirt of her beloved “Tara” in her fist, swearing that she will re-make her life on the scorched earth left to her by the Yankee soldiers. The (home)land represented by this earth suggests that a single, essentialist identity is possible within the narrative of the film (and the American South). But this simple explanation is quickly belied by Rama’s actual experience of American racism. The adult Rama looks back at the injustice behind the American culture industry: “The year I was born, 1939, Gone with the Wind (220 min., Technicolor) won the Oscar…but more importantly, Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Academy Award…Hattie McDaniel and her escort were seated at a table in the back, near the kitchen”(9). The charmed life of the big screen is undercut by the realities of American work, which he finds tedious, and the “available” American women (goris), who he finds confusing and unlike Leila.

At first, Rama can fill pages with his devotion to the symbol of his home(land), Leila, who waits patiently in Pakistan and sends him letters on pink scented stationary. But the longer he spends in America, the less he finds to say to her, or to anyone. He begins to “learn all the great American phrases” such as “no kidding” or “you know,” and soon he is “shrugging my shoulders like ‘the natives’ without even knowing it” (113). On a date with the beautiful Alice in Chicago, Rama pretends to be his lady-killer roommate, Latif. He longs to “hold her in my arms and kiss her like Burt kissed Deborah in From Here to Eternity”(122). But by the end of the date, “I didn’t even tell her my name”(122). Through silencing Rama, Haider demonstrates the impossibility of simply slipping unscathed into the “Roman” lifestyle of America.

It isn’t until he meets Sabina, a fellow “outsider” who holds multiple and conflicting identities—Jewish but often passing as “white” and a jealous espouser of “free love”—that Rama is able to (re)attach in America. Sabina is the “unknown that my heart craved in this foreign country”(152). Though she loves Rama as well, Sabine pushes him outside of his comfort zone and forces him to acknowledge his connection to the world around him, stating that “war is a global issue […] not a local one” (177). Rama visualizes his attraction to Sabina not in American movie terms, but in the Hindu tale of Rama, his namesake, and Rama’s wife Sita. This cosmopolitan assemblage of multiple cultures, faiths, and continents “is a scene from a movie I always wanted to see but hadn’t yet been made” (141). Re-writing the script of the love stories he has spent his life watching, Rama now becomes the “protagonist” that he wants to be. It is only with Sabina that Rama can begin to puzzle out who he is and speak freely about what he wants. He is now the actor, not the acted-upon: “for once I’m at peace. There are no background noises. I’m not asking any questions”(145).