Shaukat Riaz

Quick Facts

• Role: Uncle and legal guardian of Noor Riaz; primary human antagonist
• First appearance: Early in the novel (notably Chapter 3)
• Occupation: Owner of a liquor store in Juniper
• Key relationships: Noor (niece/ward), Brooke (wife), Misbah Malik
• Physical note: Described as “skinny,” with “brown hair [that] falls in his face” (Chapter 3)

Who They Are

Shaukat Riaz is the novel’s portrait of a rescuer who becomes a jailer. He pulls Noor from the earthquake rubble that kills the rest of their family, emigrates with her to the U.S., and sacrifices a promising engineering career to raise her. But the sacrifice calcifies into resentment, and his love of logic becomes a shield against grief. He tries to force a tidy theorem onto a life shattered by randomness—an impulse that curdles into control, abuse, and an embittered attempt at assimilation. Through him, the book explores the most corrosive edge of The Immigrant Experience and Cultural Identity: when rejecting one’s past becomes a form of self-erasure that harms everyone nearby.

Personality & Traits

Shaukat’s defining contradiction is that a mind wired for clarity tries to manage a world ruled by loss. He clings to proofs and theorems not just because he loves math, but because logic promises relief from chaos. When that order fails, he asserts control over the only arena he can—Noor’s life—turning intellect into a blunt instrument.

• Intellectual and analytical: A brilliant, math-obsessed thinker who explains complex ideas to others; his “theorems” provide psychological refuge from grief (Chapter 3).
• Controlling and manipulative: Micro-manages Noor’s work, social life, and movement; even “kindness” is strategic. He tricks her into confirming she went to the mosque, framing it as an objective inquiry (Chapter 20).
• Resentful and bitter: His sacrifice becomes a ledger; he treats Noor as a debt rather than a daughter, blaming her—and the past—for his lost ambitions (various).
• Anti-religious and anti-cultural: Scorns faith—“God is a construct for the weak-minded”—and polices language, food, and dress, mocking Noor’s braids as “FOB” to sever ties with Pakistan (Chapter 3).
• Volatile and abusive: The cold distance gives way to rage and physical violence, embedding him within the novel’s examination of Abuse and Intergenerational Trauma.

Character Journey

Shaukat’s “arc” is a deepening revelation rather than a transformation. Flashbacks expose the origins of his rigidity: he survives catastrophic loss, rescues Noor, immigrates, and abandons engineering. Over time, gratitude for survival twists into a fatal equation—my sacrifice = your obedience. His anti-religion rants and assimilationist rules are defensive walls against helplessness. When Noor pursues college—the one variable he cannot control—his theorem fails, and violence erupts. Crucially, he does not change; he ends where he began, imprisoned by grievance and unable to move beyond his own Forgiveness and Rage.

Key Relationships

• Noor Riaz: Shaukat is both savior and oppressor. He sees Noor as the reason he forfeited his future, treating her achievements as threats and her independence as betrayal. Their bond becomes a ledger he keeps balancing until Noor escapes, breaking the equation he’s built around her life.

• Brooke: Shaukat’s wife lives under a hush of fear. Though she rarely defies him openly, her quiet aid to Noor—small gifts, hidden help—exposes the silent resistance that grows in abusive households and the limits of Shaukat’s control.

• Misbah Malik: He frames Misbah as a cultural contaminant and bans Brooke from learning to cook from her (Chapter 5). Misbah represents what Shaukat rejects: a rooted, faith-inflected identity he believes failed his family, and thus he polices proximity to her as if protecting a fragile new self.

Defining Moments

Shaukat’s key scenes show how his logic, resentment, and need for control escalate from rhetoric to harm.

• The Birthday Bike (Chapter 3)

  • What happens: He gives Noor a bike for her eighteenth birthday.
  • Why it matters: The gift is a leash; he immediately reframes it as a way for her to work more. It’s a perfect snapshot of “benevolence” used as control.

• The Post-Funeral Rant (Chapter 10)

  • What happens: After Misbah’s funeral, he attacks the idea of prayer and recounts the earthquake, calling their home a “hovel” made of “hope and mud.”
  • Why it matters: The speech exposes his core wound and worldview: faith and tradition failed; only hard pragmatism protects. It’s the emotional engine of his cruelty.

• The Final Confrontation (Chapter 36)

  • What happens: Discovering Noor’s college applications, he explodes and assaults her.
  • Why it matters: The breakdown of his “theorem” triggers violence, pushing Noor to flee. His need for control, when thwarted, reveals the truth beneath the rhetoric.

Essential Quotes

“God,” he likes to rant, “is a construct for the weak-minded.”
(Chapter 3)

This line distills his defensive atheism into contempt. He weaponizes intellect to invalidate Noor’s inner life, equating faith with weakness to justify his dominance and erase the past that haunts him.

You look like a FOB with those braids.
(Chapter 3)

A slur masquerading as correction, this insult polices Noor’s body to police identity. By humiliating her appearance, he tries to sever cultural continuity—assimilation through shame.

Your grandfather went to masjid every day, all five prayers, holiest man in the entire damn ilaqa... What did it get him? A hovel that collapsed on him and killed everyone he loved.
(Chapter 10)

His grief hardens into a hostile thesis: faith equals futility. The earthquake becomes his proof text, allowing him to replace mourning with scorn and to rewrite tragedy as a caution against belief.

I could have told my brother that a book wouldn’t hold up a jhompri built of hope and mud.
(Chapter 10)

He ridicules aspiration—“a book”—as structurally useless, revealing his fixation on material strength after catastrophic loss. The metaphor shows how he confuses physical failure with moral or cultural failure.

Chachu’s Theorem of the Future, I call it. It’s pretty simple: Noor + College = Never going to happen.
(Chapter 3)

Framed as humor, this “theorem” is a decree. He recasts control as clarity, turning Noor’s future into a solved equation to foreclose her choice—and to reassure himself that nothing unpredictable can hurt him again.