Summary
Set in New York City’s affluent Upper East Side neighborhood, Disgraced opens on a Saturday morning in late summer 2011. Emily—a white woman in her thirties—is in her spacious apartment. Her husband Amir Kapoor—a forty-year-old South Asian man who “speaks with a perfect American accent”—poses in his boxers and a suit jacket while Emily sketches him. For inspiration, she is looking at a book open to a reproduction of Diego Velázquez’s painting Portrait of Juan de Pareja.
Amir asks Emily if she wants him to put on pants, then says he thinks it is weird for her to want to paint him after seeing a painting of a slave. Emily says the figure was Velázquez’s assistant—after Velázquez freed him. The couple discuss how a waiter racially profiled Amir the night before; the incident inspires Emily to paint an homage, as she imagines people who saw Velázquez’s painting would have had to reframe how they viewed Moors. Amir jokes that she should get her black Spanish former boyfriend to pose, to who Amir says he is grateful because José got her father used to her dating men of color.
Amir takes a phone call from Paolo, one of his legal clients, whom he berates briefly before switching to another call from a paralegal, whom he reprimands for making a mistake on a contract. He hangs up and they look at the painting in progress, which Emily says is kind of hot. Amir says it is good but “a little fucked up.” She says he likes it fucked up, and they kiss. Amir calls Mort, his boss, to discuss the contract deal. Afterward, Emily and Amir discuss how much Mort likes and depends on Amir, and joke about how Mort must have thought Amir was Hindu because Mort gave Amir the statue of Shiva on Emily and Amir’s mantel. Amir says he’ll end up as a partner at the legal firm—Kapoor will be alongside the Jewish partner names.
Amir’s nephew Abe Jensen—22, of South Asian origin, but “as American as American gets” in his vibrant manner and casual clothing—arrives at the apartment. Amir calls him Hussein, saying he isn’t going to start calling him Abe after knowing him by Hussein all his life. Abe defends himself by saying his life is easier after having changed his name, and that the Quran says you can hide your religion if you have to. Emily reminds Amir he changed his name too.
They discuss why Abe has come: he wants Amir to help defend Imam Fareed, who is on trial for raising money allegedly to fund terrorism. Amir is reluctant to get involved: as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, he doesn’t know Patriot Act law. Abe wants Amir on the case because the imam’s legal team has no Muslims. Amir mentions the hypocrisy of representing an imam given his views about Islam. Abe says that he and the family consider Amir’s rejection of the faith to be a phase, and that he was a good Muslim as a child.
Amir sits Abe down and talks about his first crush. She was a girl named Rivkah, and he was in sixth grade. Amir’s mother eventually found a note with her name on it, and she scolded Amir for being interested in a Jewish girl, spitting in his face and telling him she would break his bones if he ended up with a Jewish girl. Until then, Amir’s only ideas of Jews came from his parents, who believed God hated Jews more than other people. Amir says that the next day at school he confirmed Rivkah was Jewish and then spat in her face. Amir concludes that the phase he is going through is actually called intelligence.
Emily says she is surprised to hear the story, because Amir’s mother was kind to her, and even kissed Emily on her deathbed. Amir says she won his mother over, helping her see that not all white women are “whores” who “take off their clothes to make people like them,” which is what Amir claims Muslims around the world say about white women. Abe pipes up to say not everyone says that, but Amir confirms with Abe that he has heard it said a lot, and particularly from his mother.
Abe says Imam Fareed is not like that. Emily says he lets her sit in his mosque and sketch. Amir says he doesn’t understand what she sees in Islam. Emily reminds him about the pillars and arches in a mosque they visited in Cordoba, which Amir said made him feel like praying. Emily says there is so much beauty and wisdom in Islamic tradition, but Amir interrupts to say it’s not just beauty and wisdom. After a pause, Abe tells Amir to think of the imam not as Muslim, but as a wise man on whom people depend. Abe says he is an old man put in prison despite having done nothing wrong. Amir snaps that there’s nothing he can do, then apologizes. He and Abe hug and then Abe leaves.
The scene ends with Amir discussing how it amazes him that his family never made his sister a citizen, sending her back to Pakistan to marry; then her kids wanted to come to America and spend all their spare time at an Islamic center. Emily says Abe’s heart is in the right place, and then asks if Amir’s heart is, saying she would like to think some part of Amir believed in what he was doing as a lawyer. Amir concedes the point as a reasonable expectation, but expresses frustration over having visited the imam in prison only to have the imam spend an hour trying to convince Amir to pray again. Emily pressures Amir to see how the imam saw a connection between them and reminds Amir that he is one of the imam’s people even if Amir doesn’t see it that way. Amir stares at her for a long moment. Emily says she loves him and the lights go out.
Analysis
The opening scene of Disgraced introduces the central characters Amir and Emily, an interracial married couple who live together in a spacious apartment in New York City’s exclusive and affluent Upper East Side neighborhood. Akhtar establishes the couple’s flirtatious yet conflictual dynamic as they discuss Emily’s motivation to paint a portrait of Amir in the style of 17th-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Juan de Pareja. Although the couple discusses the original painting in a casual, joking tone, their disagreement about whether to view de Pareja as the artist’s slave, as Amir does, or his assistant, as Emily suggests, reveals a fundamental tension in the couple’s relationship.
Amir goes along with Emily’s whim to use him as her muse, but he insists that it’s “a little fucked up” that he evokes for her a famous portrait of an African-descended “Moorish” slave, however much dignity the Velázquez ascribed to the enslaved man. Amir also pokes fun at Emily, who is white, for having “broken in” her presumably racist father by dating before Amir a black Spanish man who didn’t speak English. While Amir’s delivery suggests he is not bothered by Emily’s painting or her history of dating men of color, his hostility and discomfort are nonetheless evident, suggesting that he wonders to what extent Emily is attracted to him because of his minority background.
With Amir and Emily’s first conversation, Akhtar subtly introduces some of the play’s significant themes: Muslim-American identity, the place of minorities in American society, and orientalism. The discussion moves to Amir’s law firm, which is run by Jewish men. Emily asks why Mort, one of Amir’s bosses, gave Amir a statue of the goddess Shiva. Although it seems as though the boss is out of touch and has simply assumed Amir, being of South Asian descent, is Hindu, the incident foreshadows Amir eventually revealing to Emily that he claimed his parents were born in India, purposefully obscuring his Pakistani-Muslim background at the law firm to avoid being associated with Islam. With the seemingly innocuous detail about the statue of Shiva, Akhtar introduces the themes of duplicity and Islamophobia.
Akhtar next introduces the character Abe, who is Amir’s Pakistan-born cousin. Originally named Hussein, Abe has changed his name to avoid the added scrutiny and suspicion Muslim men face in the post-9/11 era. Amir teases Abe for changing his name to Abe Jensen, but Emily points out that Amir also changed his name. Amir presumably believes his name change was more effective because it was subtle, trading out the surname Abdullah for the common Punjabi surname Kapoor. Abe, by contrast, moved from having a name associated with the vilified figure of Saddam Hussein to an uncommon American name associated with President Abraham Lincoln—“Honest Abe.” Ultimately, the humor of Hussein having changed his name to something as conspicuous as Abe distracts from a deeper symbolic point about Muslim-American identity in post-9/11 American society: To avoid prejudice based on their religious backgrounds, both Amir and Abe are inclined to rewrite fundamental components of their identities.
After prompting from Emily, Abe admits he has come to ask Amir to support Imam Fareed, a Muslim religious leader who is being tried for allegedly fundraising for terrorist activities. The suggestion seems to irritate Amir deeply, and he reminds Abe that he is a lapsed Muslim, and does not agree with the imam’s religion. However, the irritation and aggression Amir exhibits reveals a deeper discomfort with and fear of being associated with his Muslim background. In the scene, Amir cannot admit that he worries his connection to Islam will jeopardize his chances of ascending to the position of partner at his Jewish-run law firm.
During the conversation with Abe, Amir also defends his turning away from Islam by telling the story of how his mother spat in his face and threatened to break his bones when she learned he had a crush on a Jewish girl. With the story, which introduces the theme of antisemitism, Amir refutes Abe’s and Emily’s arguments for seeing the beauty and wisdom and innocence of Islam, a religion Amir seems to view as wholly negative. The moment foreshadows Amir’s lengthy explanation of why he associates Islam with backward-thinking cruelty and hatred. Despite his rejection of Abe’s request, Amir ends the scene in a tense moment with Emily that suggests she is going to convince him to do the right thing and support the innocent man.
