Since he was hired at his firm, Amir has carried and protected the secret of his real name. Emily knows that Amir changed his last name from Abdullah to Kapoor but does not seem to know the full extent of his change in identity. She doesn’t learn until Scene 3 that Amir changed his social security number and doesn’t know why Amir’s boss would have bought him a statue of a Hindu god as a gift. Amir is Pakistani and has been pretending to be Indian because he needs to hide the fact that he is Muslim from his Jewish bosses, regardless of the fact that he no longer practices the religion. Before discovering his real name, the Jewish partners are favoring Amir, grooming him to become a partner himself. Amir muses that his mother would be angry to see him working with Jewish men, but perhaps she would be less upset because he isn’t doing so under the family name.

For Amir, the distinction between Pakistani and Indian feels arbitrary. Both of his parents were born in present-day Pakistan, but his father was technically born in India because he was born before the partitioning of India, and his mother was born after.