ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the 'seen' and the 'said' in order to examine how post-9/11 Pakistani and US fictions represent the figure of the 'terrorist'. H. M. Naqvi's Home Boy and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist hone reader's literacy in the sense that these Pakistani fictions construct the figure of the alleged 'terrorist' as an exploration of 'bare life'. Federal agents, some with the FBI, others whose affiliations remain unknown, haul a now-hooded Chuck, AC, and Jimbo to the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, a place Chuck refers to as 'American's Own Abu Ghraib', on suspicion of 'terrorist activities'. Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist also focuses on the positions of the sovereign and homo sacer. Changez's interest in the man's bearing signals to the reader that the stranger has a commanding presence, that he occupies space in a confident way, which says a lot given that the two meet in Anarkali, a thriving Lahori bazaar.
