Amir Kapoor/Abdullah Character Analysis

High ceilings, parquet floors, crown molding. The works.

I think it’s a little weird. That you want to paint me after seeing a painting of a slave.

Why’d he get you a statue of Siva? […] He doesn’t think you’re Hindu, does he?

I don’t like what’s happening. Somebody’s gotta do something about it.

You know how much easier things are for me since I changed my name?

So Rivkah and I’d gotten to the point where we were trading notes. And one day, my mother found one of the notes. Of course it was signed, Rivkah. Rivkah? my mom says. That's a Jewish name […] So I tell my mom, No, she’s not Jewish. But she knew the name was Jewish. If I ever hear that name in this house again, Amir, she said, I’ll break your bones. You will end up with a Jew over my dead body. Then she spat in my face […] Next day? Rivkah comes up to me in the hall with a note. Hi, Amir, she says. Eyes sparkling. I look at her and say, You’ve got the name of a Jew. She smiles. Yes, I’m Jewish, she says […] Then I spit in her face.

White women have no self-respect. How can someone respect themselves when they think they have to take off their clothes to make people like them?

I think you’re overthinking this.

Let me get this straight: Some waiter is a dick to me in a restaurant and you want to make a painting. But if it’s something that actually might affect my livelihood, you don’t even want to believe there could be a problem.

The Islamic tiling tradition, Isaac? Is a doorway to the most extraordinary freedom. And which only comes through a kind of profound submission. In my case, of course it’s not submission to Islam but to the formal language. The pattern. The repetition. And the quiet that this work requires of me? It’s extraordinary.

He drinks. Drinks again. Stares down into the bottom of his glass. Burning.

Beat.

Then all at once, he SMASHES the glass on the terrace floor. Shards fly.

Beat.

The burst of violence doesn't seem to have soothed him.

He knew about my name change. Your birth name is not Kapoor, Steven says. It’s Abdullah. Why did you change it?

The work you’re doing with the Islamic tradition is important and new. It needs to be seen. Widely.

Moor? Haven’t heard that word in a minute.

So there you are in your six-hundred-dollar Charvet shirt, like Velázquez’s brilliant apprentice-slave in his lace collar, adorned in the splendors of the world you're now so clearly a part of… And yet... […] The question remains […] Of your Place.

It’s a nightmare at the airports.

Those agents are working hard not to discriminate… Then here’s this guy who comes up to them and calls them out…

I picked up the recipe when I was on a Fulbright in Seville.

I was horrified by it, okay? Absolutely horrified. […] That we were finally winning. […] It's tribal, Jor. It is in the bones. You have no idea how I was brought up. You have to work real hard to root that shit out.

Fucking closet jihadist.

The expression on that face? Shame. Anger. Pride. Yeah. The pride he was talking about. The slave finally has the master’s wife.

Do we want to blow stuff up? How often did I read the Koran? […] Do I hate America?

When you step out of your parents’ house, you need to understand that it’s not a neutral world out there. Not right now. Not for you. You have to be mindful about sending a different message.

High ceilings, parquet floors, crown molding. The works.

I think it’s a little weird. That you want to paint me after seeing a painting of a slave.

Why’d he get you a statue of Siva? […] He doesn’t think you’re Hindu, does he?

I don’t like what’s happening. Somebody’s gotta do something about it.

You know how much easier things are for me since I changed my name?

So Rivkah and I’d gotten to the point where we were trading notes. And one day, my mother found one of the notes. Of course it was signed, Rivkah. Rivkah? my mom says. That's a Jewish name […] So I tell my mom, No, she’s not Jewish. But she knew the name was Jewish. If I ever hear that name in this house again, Amir, she said, I’ll break your bones. You will end up with a Jew over my dead body. Then she spat in my face […] Next day? Rivkah comes up to me in the hall with a note. Hi, Amir, she says. Eyes sparkling. I look at her and say, You’ve got the name of a Jew. She smiles. Yes, I’m Jewish, she says […] Then I spit in her face.

White women have no self-respect. How can someone respect themselves when they think they have to take off their clothes to make people like them?

I think you’re overthinking this.

Let me get this straight: Some waiter is a dick to me in a restaurant and you want to make a painting. But if it’s something that actually might affect my livelihood, you don’t even want to believe there could be a problem.

The Islamic tiling tradition, Isaac? Is a doorway to the most extraordinary freedom. And which only comes through a kind of profound submission. In my case, of course it’s not submission to Islam but to the formal language. The pattern. The repetition. And the quiet that this work requires of me? It’s extraordinary.

He drinks. Drinks again. Stares down into the bottom of his glass. Burning.

Beat.

Then all at once, he SMASHES the glass on the terrace floor. Shards fly.

Beat.

The burst of violence doesn't seem to have soothed him.

He knew about my name change. Your birth name is not Kapoor, Steven says. It’s Abdullah. Why did you change it?

The work you’re doing with the Islamic tradition is important and new. It needs to be seen. Widely.

Moor? Haven’t heard that word in a minute.

So there you are in your six-hundred-dollar Charvet shirt, like Velázquez’s brilliant apprentice-slave in his lace collar, adorned in the splendors of the world you're now so clearly a part of… And yet... […] The question remains […] Of your Place.

It’s a nightmare at the airports.

Those agents are working hard not to discriminate… Then here’s this guy who comes up to them and calls them out…

I picked up the recipe when I was on a Fulbright in Seville.

I was horrified by it, okay? Absolutely horrified. […] That we were finally winning. […] It's tribal, Jor. It is in the bones. You have no idea how I was brought up. You have to work real hard to root that shit out.

Fucking closet jihadist.

The expression on that face? Shame. Anger. Pride. Yeah. The pride he was talking about. The slave finally has the master’s wife.

Do we want to blow stuff up? How often did I read the Koran? […] Do I hate America?

When you step out of your parents’ house, you need to understand that it’s not a neutral world out there. Not right now. Not for you. You have to be mindful about sending a different message.