Pakistan is a country with a massive income gap between the rich and the poor. An economic measure that demonstrates this is the Gini coefficient, which essentially measures how far away from income equality we are. The Gini coefficient in Pakistan is 30, where on that scale, zero represents absolute equality and 100 represents absolute inequality. This economic disparity represents a social gap. It is also emblematic of the disparity in the distribution of assets and variance of social indicators, such as health, education and overall quality of life.

Mohsin Hamid’s novel, "Moth Smoke," exaggerates and satires this social divide. Hamid uses symbols to satire this divide, such as big cars and air conditioning, but what is most puzzling is his depiction of characters breaking the law. Through the use of different narrators, Hamid tells the story of Darashikoh Shezad (Daru), a middle class character who loses his job and is “propelled [...] inexorably toward a life of crime,” says Hamid, in order to keep up with his elite friends. Hamid shows the biggest disparity between social classes when he depicts the consequences of their crimes or reacting toward breaking norms.

I think the most pertinent bits of the plot are when Daru kills a young boy in cold blood during a robbery and his elite friend, Aurangzeb (Ozi), kills another young boy in a car accident. These two murders occur at different times for different reasons and most importantly by different perpetrators. Daru is then convicted, not for the murder he committed, but for the murder Ozi committed and subsequently framed Daru for. This is possible, in particular, because Ozi is a member of the elite class. He admits, in his own narration, he is the son of the corrupt politician and his money launderer. He is able to influence the police, or the traditional power structures, due to social norms. Ozi also wants to take revenge on Daru for his extramarital affair with his (Ozi’s) wife, Mumtaz, a transgression against social norm. Actually, having sex outside marriage is punishable by law in Pakistan, but that’s a discussion for another day.

To continue, Ozi faces no consequences for his crime, but pawns them off onto Daru. Because Ozi is able to influence the police, the courts and other forms of authority, he is not only able to get away with crime, but also able to frame someone else for it, or in other words, commit another crime. As a Pakistani, I think this is pretty common. Based on my experience, in response to a ticket, we bribe. In response to failing a driver’s test, we also bribe. In response to a murder, we commit perjury. Actually, I don't think anyone does that, but Hamid's exaggeration made me think about all the minor infractions depicted in the novel, and what they actually mean. In Pakistan, the elite have influence over the police and other traditional authorities, perhaps not to the extent as in Hamid’s novel, but I think it is a mentality or social norm that exists.

Hamid's novel shows us the worst possible version of this social norm, and I think "Moth Smoke" can be read as an exposé of society, a critique of Pakistani societal standards and a push toward questioning the extent to which we are imprisoned by the norm. This novel, in fact, ends in Daru literally being imprisoned because one of the elite is able to influence those around him, which shows the power that societal norms and standards have. Hamid uses a variety of interesting techniques to make us question this norm, other than exaggerating it to its worst possible extent. The first he redefines the crime genre. Previously, crime novel protagonists, or central characters, had always been either the falsely suspected or convicted, or the killer or criminal. Daru, however, is both.

Being both the falsely suspected and the killer gives Daru different dimensions, in that, although he is a killer and we feel that he should go to jail, he is falsely convicted and the real killer goes free. This is a tension that causes the reader to think about truth versus justice. It was just or fair that Daru was imprisoned, but did anyone really care about the truth?

Hamid presents Daru as falsely suspected when he narrates the murder that Ozi commits, and his narration is relevant because he shows the elite’s complete disregard for the lower classes. The stage is set when Daru tells us that when Ozi breaks traffic lights and is reminded of traffic rules, he states that the first rule, or social norm, is that “bigger cars have the right of way” and destroy anyone who defies that norm, in this case by killing them by running a red light. Hamid’s description of the victim reinforces that Ozi has committed a crime by obsessively adhering to an unwritten rule of social discipline. The victim is described as “a boy [who] pushes off unsteadily to cross the road on a bicycle that’s too big for him.” Hamid’s use of the phrase “boy” and Daru’s reference to the victim as “kid” incite pity in the reader, and as such, hatred for Ozi and his standard nonchalance. Hamid’s imagery demonstrating that the boy is not even big enough for his bicycle portrays an image of youth, but more importantly emphasizes that he is on his bicycle, and thus, should yield to people in bigger cars due to the social standards. The fact that he is smaller than his bicycle is indicative of the idea that his life means even less when confronted by upper class society.

After the murder, the meaninglessness of this boy’s life is evidenced by his murder being left “unnoticed by the receding Pajero.” Ozi’s characterization as a Pajero here demonstrates what Ozi thinks is important, such as his material goods. He is also compared to an animal, a bull, when Hamid uses the phrase “charges away” from the crime scene, unaffected by the fact that he has just taken a life. This shows that his crime has no immediate consequences, once again, influenced by social norms: Ozi is in a large car, and therefore, is not stopped in the middle of the street and arrested.

Another technique I’ve been alluding to is Hamid’s narrative techniques. To address the reader, he uses second person omniscient narration, or rather, he doesn’t use a partial character to address the reader. The reader is in an interesting position in this novel because the “you” in the second person refers to the judge, but also almost moralizes the reader as the judge of Daru’s trial. The reader, or judge, must choose whether Daru is falsely accused, or the killer. This is an impossible task, given that he is both, but Hamid implies that the weight of the decision of Daru’s conviction is on the reader, and as such, emphasizes the social norms the judge utilizes. He says, “The gavel weighs heavily in your hand.” Here, the gavel is a symbol for power, indicating that the reader has the power to acquit Daru for at least this crime because he has not been framed. The phrase “weighs heavily” demonstrates the extent of the reader’s power and, in that, the reader’s responsibility. However, Hamid shatters this when the reader learns Daru is convicted.

In part, the reader is blamed and should feel guilty because they were the judge. As such, the reader can feel, almost firsthand, the injustice of the matter and question standards. More importantly, the reader can see the judge’s, and by extension, his or her own tendencies to adhere to generalizations and social norms, where the social norm is that if Daru is “described as untrustworthy by a former employer, as a peddler of drugs” as the prosecutor says in his closing remarks, he must, too, be a killer and untrustworthy, or, “The words of such a man must be given little weight.” In other words, once a criminal, always a criminal, a standard that the judge adheres to.

The repeated use of the words “weight” and “weighs” indicate that although the power of Daru’s fate is in the judge’s hands, it is not in Daru’s own, which once again, demonstrates his lack of control, but this time in the face of traditional power, or legal authority. This is a huge contrast between the elite Ozi, who can influence traditional power and the middle-class Daru, who is powerless against it. More importantly, traditional power takes its cue from social standards and adheres strictly to generalizations, as does the judge. The separation between the reader and the judge via the real world allows the reader to see his adherence to social norm and, by extension, check his or her own adherence to norms and generalizations. Thus, the novel exposes such generalizations as blatantly false and causes the reader to question themselves.

This novel forces the reader to think really hard the social norms in their world, particularly the social class divide in Pakistani society. This is relevant to crime in our world, as expressed in a blog post by Areesha Sampson that tells the story of Sami Duranni, a man who raped and killed "20 prostitutes of Heera Mandi" (the red light district in Lahore), before giving himself up to the police.

A blogger asserts that before the alleged killer "gave himself up," the police really did nothing to find him, whereas "if it were the daughters of the elite who were raped and murdered, action would have been taken." Although this was decades ago, according to Sampson, this story just goes to show that social class and crime are correlated in more ways than one, and Hamid’s novel is one that exposes crime such that we should think more about the standards of the world we live in.