Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie: A Book of love, politics, radicalism, sacrifice, and pain - Book Review

Title: Home Fire

Author: Kamila Shamsie

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis

Isma is offered a Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Massachusetts in the United States, and after serving as a defacto mother to her two 19 years old twin-siblings after their mother passed away, she leaped at the offer in the hope of getting a hold of her life more personally this time. However, she cannot stop thinking about her siblings back in the UK - the rebellious beautiful Aneeka, and fierce yet kind Parvaiz. Soon she feels herself falling for a young atheist man, Eammon. But the journey she started with the hope of creating a new life for herself soon becomes a turning point in their dooming family with the tragedy of a lifetime. Home Fire is a beautiful modern tale of classic Antigone play with the central themes of love, loyalty, politics, prejudices, sacrifice, and passion.

Book Review

It is a sort of book that is written in palatable language but influences you deeply, leaves its mark on you, and somehow moves something within you. 

Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire opens with a scene that will likely be familiar to any Muslim who has traveled to or lives in the West. Isma Pasha waits in a British airport while security officers check her luggage, go through the browser history on her laptop, and demands "to know her thoughts on Shias, homosexuals, the Queen, democracy, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites."

In Home Fire (2017), you don’t get to just see the characters living the British lifestyle, the story has much more to offer other than reflecting the struggle of Muslim immigrants across the UK. With themes, references, and settings of the modern world, it is a quite different and beautifully adapted version of the play. Shamsie uniquely captures the essence of the play where the protagonist has to make the choice of either abiding by the land or following her heart and embracing death by the end of it.

Meanwhile, where the storyline is nice and plainly written to target the major audience, I guess, I found the style a bit boring at times. But I wouldn’t say it affects the overall quality of the experience. The novel is divided into 5 portions - a portion for each major character during which we get to see the world from his eyes and experience life from his perspective. Instead of condensing all information from one character’s point of view, that’s how Kamila chose to convey the whole story, and I rather enjoyed it. 

However, there is one scene that I found very disturbing to read. I am not sure if that was the narrative Shamsie was mocking or promoting. But here it is - both main female characters, Isma and Aneeka are shown as Hijabis. Whereas Isma, the elder sister, is the voice of reason and compromise, and Aneeka is a rebel. She doesn't comply with the rules of the land or her religion but does what she wills. Therefore, her actions often also contradict the core values of the hijab, and obviously Islam itself. It is understandable that no Muslim is perfect, and even the ones that practice the religion visibly can also struggle at times. But she develops an intimate relationship with Eammon, the son of the Home Secretary of Britain. And during this whole scenario, Eammon also fetishes her Hijab, and that was simply disrespectful.

It felt as if the sacred practice of wearing a Hijab - which not only embodies a headscarf but a whole lifestyle of a woman carrying herself out in the world - was reduced to a mere habit of hiding her hair from a selective group of people while she "chooses what and how much of herself she shows to others" she fancy. But it got me to ponder over the hypocrisy of people. What image we choose to show in the world, and how differently we act in our personal spaces.

Besides it all

There is no question that the novel is a one musical story ingrained in the flawed and emotional nature of humans. In one passage in Aneeka's section, Shamsie delivers a moving perspective on grief: "grief was bad-tempered; grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself; grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered." 

In the meantime, the novel might not be the perfect one but it is surely a moving one. 

Kamila Shamsie

Shamsie is a Pakistani-British writer whose work has been applauded and awarded globally since her first novel was published back in 1997. She has been best described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." Meanwhile, after her enriching journey, she has certainly acquired the talent to hook up her readers and intrigue them even without relying on fancy English vocabulary.