Imad Rahman: most people find headaches and heartaches with bad jobs. This writer found his plotlines

Interview, April, 2004 by Richard Dorment

In his debut collection of short stories, I Dream of Microwaves (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux), Imad Rahman weaves a complex investigation of identity and self-invention through eight interconnected vignettes, binding them together by what he sees as a single leitmotif: "They're about shitty jobs," he laughs.

Rahman uses the same narrator throughout Microwaves, a congenitally unlucky Pakistani-American actor named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who holds a different job in each story. Whether he is dressing as Zorro to hawk alcohol, renting out his home to Camille Paglia--versed pornographers, or reenacting crimes on America's Most Wanted (only to find himself mistaken for the real criminal), Kareem's adventures in the workforce are at once outlandish and enlightening, an absurdist carnival that brings life's comedies, and tragedies, into greater relief. Here, the 33year-old writer tells his own story.

RICHARD DORMENT: Let's start from the beginning: Where did you grow up?

IMAD RAHMAN: I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, in a bilingual household. I was probably a troubled child, in that I was trouble. Rabblerousing and drinking too much.

RD: The "immigrant experience" has been a huge influence on American culture. You moved to the United States when you were 18 to go to Ohio Wesleyan University. Was it tough assimilating into a new world?

IR: Not at all, but then again, I don't really register things that way. It just means that I'm a little more disconnected from my surroundings, and a little more connected to being disconnected. Does that make any sense?

RD: Absolutely, especially considering how important sensitivity is to a writer. Have you always wanted to write?

IR: Before college I had no clue what I wanted to do. I started taking English classes because I didn't want to get up in the morning, and I realized a lot of English classes, especially fiction-writing workshops, were afternoon ones. Then I graduated and felt like I wanted to write, but I didn't have anything to write about; so I spent a couple of years messing around in lousy jobs--things like walking dogs, tending bar.

RD: And a lot of those jobs appear in your collection and assume extreme, absurdist qualities.

IR: It's an absurd world we're living in, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to live in any other.

RD: With your next project, a novel, are you worried about going over the top?

IR: [laughs] I don't think I've gone far enough over the top.

Richard Dorment is an editorial assistant for Interview. Right: Jacket and T-shirt by ADIDAS. Jeans by H&M. Shoes by Y-3. Styling: KAREN TIMM. Fashion details page 181. Photo: TOM MCINVAILLE.