TheDaak review

Homefire by Kamila Shamshie,  Riverhead Books, 2017, 288 pages, 15.88 x 3.18 x 24.13 cm, 9780735217683, Rs. 389

By Jigeesha Bhargavi

The poststructuralist feminist scholars of the 1980s undertook a significant project of critiquing the patriarchal undertones in the Western canonization of Greek tragedies. In the same paradigm, there was a simultaneous feminist reclamation and rewriting of the tragedies by female writers and directors who used characters like Antigone, Medea, Clytemnestra and Electra to make a powerful statement about modern society. Edith Hall in Why Greek Tragedy in the Late Twentieth Century (2004) while explaining this phenomenon says, “Greek tragedy was first and foremost rediscovered by women because it appeared to be honest about the opportunities life offered their ancient counterparts, particularly with regard to the relative importance of affective ties with parents, siblings, and children compared to those with lovers and husbands. Modern viewers seem to connect with the portrayal of ‘feminine excess’, maybe as a result of the difficulties they raise regarding gender identity and marital relationships..”(p.13)

One may find Kamila Shamshie’s 2017 adaptation of Antigone to be a responsible postcolonial bequeathe of the same tradition. Homefire is a brilliant intersectional feminist granddaughter of those suffragette grandmothers. 

In her Women’s prize for fiction winner, Shamshie tackles too many themes at once and wonderfully so. To call it layered would be an understatement, because the basic anatomy of layers is that one piece comes beneath another. Rather, Homefire is a montage art, a collage that binds a number of political and personal issues in one frame: immigrant dilemma, Islamophobia, female choice, twin sibling relationships, de-globalization post 9/11, South Asian gender roles, terrorism, the surveillance state. 

For me, most importantly, it is a story of abandonments. Abandonment by sons, abandonment by the young of their old, abandonment of citizens by the state, and abandonment of the dead by those living. 

WHO IS A GOOD BRITISH?

When asked about the title, Kamila Shamshie in an interview said, “For me, there are two meanings of Home Fire: it can mean welcome and warmth, as in ‘keep the home fires burning’ or it can mean a house on fire. I wanted both those meanings in there since this is a novel that has within it both intimacy/love and conflagration”. (Jaya, 2017) Thus, the specificity of the two homes in which the story takes place are of Pakistani-descent British families: the Pashas and the Lones. Pashas are survived by three members and one shame. Isma Pasha, the eldest daughter, and her twin siblings Aneeka and Parwaiz since their mother died at a young age, live with her at the family home bearing the family shame–their father Adil Pasha. He had joined ISIS to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan and died after being captured by American forces exposing the whole family to a lifetime of scrutiny and suspicion from the British state.  The Lones,on the other hand but metaphorically and literally live on the opposite side of the city and belong to a different social class, are a nuclear family of ‘liberal’ Muslims. Karamat Lone, the first ever Muslim Home Secretary of the UK, his Irish-American wife Terry Lone, their son Eamonn ‘with an Irish spelling to disguise a Muslim name – Ayman became Eamonn so that people would know the father had integrated’ (p.16)), and their daughter Emily. 

Home for both these families -like all immigrants- is a forever burning trial by fire to prove their chastity of faith every day. One may be seen as more loyal than the other, yet, none is as loyal as a non migrant, native English citizen. In “Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity” (2011) Paul Thomas and Pete Sanderson introduce a dichotomy between the concepts of Britishness and Englishness in the post-9/11 world (p. 1028-1044). Dwelling on the discursive power of the Bush state, the authors explain that if a citizenship holder who follows Islam does not categorise oneself as a jihadi, they are considered a moderate Muslim which consequently translates into not just being a dutiful British, but also a stalwart of Englishness. As US President George Bush exclaimed at the launch of his War on Terror  “Either you are with us or with the terrorists”. It is in this dichotomy that the two families interact. Karamat had to sabotage his ‘Muslimness’ and his community to serve Britain. Or as justified by his son, “ had to be more careful than any other MP, and at times that meant doing things he regretted. But everything he did, even the wrong choices, was because he had a sense of purpose. Public service, national good, British values. He deeply believes in these things. All the wrong choices he made were necessary to get him to the right place, the place he is now” (p. 53).   On the other hand, Isma, who dons a hijab is stopped at the Heathrow airport for a detailed inspection, “He wanted to know her thoughts on homosexuals, the Queen, The Great British Bake Off, the invasion of Iraq, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites”. (p. 6) While Pashas are limited to Britishness, the Lones have transcended to Englishness. One is questioned, and another is defended. One is wrong, another right. Dichotomies, hence, stalk the lives of both these migrant families. 

(UN)STEREOTYPICAL CHARACTERS 

The book is divided into five parts each from the station of the main five characters: Isma, Eamonn, Parwaiz, Aneeka, and Karamat, in that order. This decision, to let each character borrow an active intimacy with the reader within just 288 pages, marks the brilliant depth and deftness of Shamsie’s writing. The multi-point-of-view narrative tricks the reader into the constant making and unmaking of their hatred (or love) for any character. Finally, you end up saying something like, what Shamshie said about Karamat’s character “I won’t vote for him but I might not mind sitting with him for dinner”. (Shamshie, 2019, 40:24)

While Isma goes to the USA to pursue her PhD in Sociology, finally getting her life back, history repeats itself and abandonment creeps into the house again with Parwaiz fleeing away and joining the media wing of ISIS in Syria. Isma, being the parent figure that she was, informs the police about him in order to protect the rest of her family–Aneeka. From here the rift between the two sisters began and also the second abandonment. Aneeka abandoning Isma.  At this point, the novel seems to be urging upon the need to explore the strategies that ISIS employs to draw young, mostly teenage boys like the nineteen-year-old Parvaiz into such extreme radicalization. It is mentioned that the young Parvaiz, “had begun to idolise the father who fought with Britain’s enemies” (p. 201). Farooq, the ISIS recruiter disguised as Adil Pasha’s friend, plays on the young Parvaiz’s yearning for his father and narrates to him stories about “the great warrior Abu Parvaiz…Superhero” (p. 127). Going to the war front is somehow linked with manliness and is identified with the process of a young boy’s maturity into ‘manhood,’ 

POLITICS OF ANEEKA’S GRIEF

Shamshie’s pen and politics are unleashed in all its glory during the final part of the story. A grief-struck Aneeka heads to Karachi forsaking Isma and her homeland forever, where the body of Parwaiz was sent by the Pakistan Consulate in Turkey once the UK government denied his right to be buried in Britain. “We will not let those who turn against the soil of Britain in their lifetime sully that very soil in death” (p. 193). What follows next is not an emotional display of grief but a political statement of dissent. Butler in Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable expands on the performativity of mourning and how mourning practices are socially constructed and regulated. She argues that the recognition of certain lives as grievable is performative and contingent upon dominant cultural norms and ideologies, but the only way to subvert this is to ensure a political instrumentalization of public grieving for the ‘ungriveable’. Shamshie is unflinching in inserting these ideas of Butler, as Aneeka is seen at a park in Karachi with her brother’s dead body. There is an eerie patience and stillness in the whole scene, Aneeka does nothing, she just sits alongside a person she loved who was the enemy of the state. Yet, her mere existence is a threat because through the whole scene, Aneeka brings the public to grieve.

Adaptations, though providing a fertile ground for inquisitive receptions, are also limiting endeavours, as Nilianjana Roy writes in their review of Homefire “It takes nerve and a steady hand for a writer to adapt a classic…The adaptation must have its own inner strength and spirit, and a sound reason for reaching back through time to the original.” (Roy, 2018) Hence, like Antigone’s suicide in Sopcohole’s version, Homefire had to culminate into a theatrical end for Aneeka, and in this urgentness Shamshie falters. Aneeka and Eamonn, the young couple made out of passion and subterfuge, are neither victims nor drivers of circumstances, but are rather the circumstance itself. Shamshie uses them as tools for the plot, assigning them a stereotypical problematic- a South asian brat fell in love with a forbidden girl is ready to die in the flush of youth and a manipulative beauty only has her body to make her way in the world role.

Our author here, then, makes her moving ending from the same mould of prejudices she engineered to subtly break all through her story. This criticism takes us to a pertinent question: Can a subaltern author, for their craft to flourish, not borrow from the dominant narrative? Or does their politics burden and limit them to just drawing an alternative reality?

References

Interview: Kamila Shamsie on her Bold and Heart-Breaking New Novel, “Home Fire” Jaya’s blog. (2017, August 30). Jaya Bhattacharji Rose. Retrieved March 17, 2024, from https://www.jayabhattacharjirose.com/interview-kamila-shamsie-on-her-bold-and-heart-breaking-new-novel-home-fire/

Roy, N. S. (2018, June 7). Book review: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie – nilanjana s roy. nilanjana s roy. Retrieved March 17, 2024, from https://nilanjanaroy.com/2018/06/07/book-review-home-fire-by-kamila-shamsie/comment-page-1/

Shamsie, K., & Rodrigues, T. (2019, July 8). Kamila Shamsie: Home Fire. YouTube. Retrieved March 18, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilRKfXn_ZFU