Posted in the April 1, 2024 issue of The New Yorker, “Allah Have Mercy,” by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, is an exceptional story of a boy’s initiation into psychological and physical violence at the hands of a disciplinarian uncle. While occasionally it is difficult to think of something cogent to say about a newly published story, in this case Mr. Ali’s work is so thought provoking and emotive that the converse is true–it is impossible to do justice to such a great work in such a short post. If you’d like to take a deeper dive, please head over our In Discussion page to read excerpts from our discussion of this wonderful story.

Although the title raises the prospect that this a predominantly religious story, it is not. Set in a contemporary community with a religious backdrop, it is more a story about how the narrator tries to make sense of the harsh and escalating abuse, both of himself and his cousin, by a notorious uncle who is headmaster at the local madrassa (religious school) and the community’s self-appointed arbiter and enforcer of decorum–a disciplinarian both by profession and vocation. So domineering is this uncle that the entire community–even the three grandmothers who are said to be the only ones who can subordinate him to grace–are both powerless to prevent his abuse, and, out of fear turn, a blind eye to it (with the notable exception of the boy’s mother, who does what she can). This bystander effect–we’d call it moral cowardice, but, on second thought, we can’t be certain what we would do in such a situation–pervades the story and is stunningly resonant in light of the narrative’s beautifully ambiguous conclusion.

And while this story can be discussed from many interesting angles, here we would like to briefly highlight how it can be read as a political allegory for tyranny. The uncle, despite his pretensions to devotion and his scholarly credentials, is really nothing but a whip-yielding sadist (nickname: Zorro, somewhat ironically) and inveterate bully; a hypocrite who presents himself, and is venerated as, a moral authority; but in reality, this veneer scarcely masks a capricious moral coward who uses his physical stature to intimidate and subordinate boys. Like dictators, the uncle trades in fear and leaves his victims–those he supposedly serves to protect–physically and psychologically traumatized. Likewise, through fear he robs his people of their agency and renders them incapable of voicing any form of discontent. Every act of agency is an act of sedition; in the story, the uncle’s most heinous and arbitrary beating is seemingly triggered by the newfound confidence and air of freedom exhibited by the narrator and his cousin Hafiz (Uncle Usama’s son), after their return from a joyful sojourn to a pool and recreation facility in the aftermath of the uncle’s first beating of the narrator. Notably, this was a trip that the uncle had both granted rare sanction for, and had even financed, in an uncharacteristic show of beneficence, in the form of lorry fare and money for snacks.

Following this second and more savage beating, the narrator’s mother pulls him from school for a week to convalesce; he fares much better than Hafiz, who disappears for an extended period after running away and reemerges permanently altered–perpetually nervous and submerged in his own escapist world of imaginary friends, whom he speaks to. Mad Hafiz, as his schoolmates begin to call him due to his nervousness and nascent bouts of paranoia, is said by members of the community to be possessed by evil jinns, a kind of supernatural creature; this, despite his condition being the obvious consequence of his uncle’s abuse. And while members of the community publicly endorse this jinn explanation, we assume that their apparent superstition is in reality tacit compliance due to fear of the uncle, or a kind of cognitive dissonance to assuage their own consciences for their failure to intervene in the abuse. The uncle, in true despot form, even capitalizes on, and perpetuates, the supernatural scapegoat:

[Uncle Usama] also created a powerful talisman inscribed with all the ninety-nine names of Allah. The talisman, sewn in crocodile skin, was given to Hafiz to carry on his body at all times, to help drive away the bad jinns.

The narrator, though, in his mind at least, questions this:

But, in my own mind, I questioned whether any jinn was truly following Hafiz; I had a feeling that his behavior was a direct result of his constant state of anxiety caused by Uncle’s explosive temper.

When the uncle meets his unexpected demise at the end of the story, the narrator, despite his previous skepticism, cannot escape the hulking shadow of his domination–perhaps a kind of Stockholm Syndrome:

“Allah have mercy,” I repeated, though deep in the pit of my stomach I felt that my cries and prayers were not meant for Uncle Usama but for Hafiz. For Allah to have mercy and keep the jinns away from my cousin, as Uncle Usama would not be around to defeat them the next time they tired to steal Hafiz from us.

And while the uncle can certainly be viewed as a one-dimensional psychopath, it is also possible to view him as a more complex character. In the first reading, he is a master manipulator who sets the narrator and Hafiz up in order to publicly knock them down–similar to how Winston Smith is “rehabilitated” and executed precisely at the moment that his brainwashing culminates in a feeling of genuine love for Big Brother, in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this case, the uncle is a pure sadist. But it is also possible to see him as psychologically nuanced, a character who feels legitimate contrition and attempts to change–but, human as he is, he succumbs to base impulses despite his best intentions otherwise:

Uncle continued to act so nicely [due to his apparent contrition] that even the pupils at the madrassa agreed that a change of some kind had occurred. He actually went a whole month without whipping a student…myself included, enjoyed the freedom that came with Uncle’s sudden change of character. We hoped and prayed that Uncle Usama had truly turned over a new leaf.

Thus it seems plausible that the uncle, as sadistic as he is, was moved to change but falls short and rebounds in a final act of unfettered anger.

The resonance of this great story is crystallized in the conclusion through the ambiguity that surrounds the uncle’s death and the sense of ambivalence that the narrator feels as he tries to make sense of it. As above, there are so many great things to discuss and think about with this story; so please head over to In Discussion to read excerpts from Colin and Jennifer’s discussion of this multi-layered masterpiece.