Previous
Chapter 8 – Karamat
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Home Fire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Islam, Nationality, and Identity.
Familial Love, Protection, and Betrayal
Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance
Stereotypes vs. Individuality
Summary
Analysis
That evening, Karamat wakes in the middle of the night, lonely. He climbs into bed with Terry, asking her to let him stay. She relents, pressing into him. Tomorrow, he knows, he’ll have to tell her that Eamonn has gone to Karachi “to prove to his father he had a spine.” Soon after, however, he realizes that he needs to keep his mind clear, and he leaves once more to sleep in the basement.
Eamonn’s motivations for going to Karachi illustrate the fallout of his feelings that his father has betrayed him. He is also rebelling against his father to try and prove to him that he has his own strength and can be his own person outside of the legacy his father has left.
Themes
The next morning, Karamat is woken by James telling him that Eamonn has almost landed in Pakistan. James also shows Karamat a video that Eamonn released. Eamonn speaks directly to the camera, explaining that he is currently caught between his father and his “fiancée.” Eamonn explains that he knew Aneeka’s father had been a jihadi who was held in Afghanistan and died on his way to Guantánamo. He says that he despises the choices that Adil Pasha made, but that Aneeka and Isma’s ability to move past these difficulties makes them “extraordinary women.”
Like Isma and Aneeka have done throughout the book, here Eamonn and Karamat stand on two competing sides of doing what they think is best for their family, and each thinks that the other is betraying them. Karamat was trying to separate his son from Aneeka in order to protect him, while Eamonn feels that Aneeka essentially represents family to him now—he wants to protect her instead.
Themes
Eamonn explains that he and Aneeka fell in love, and that even though Karamat knows that he doesn’t “deserve a woman that wonderful,” he knows that there was no pretense between them. And so Aneeka told him about her brother, who was trying to escape to the British consulate to return home—not approaching it for some act of terrorism. He admits that he does not know what crimes Parvaiz may have committed in Syria, however.
Eamonn’s language here about Karamat believing that he doesn’t deserve Aneeka is another sly hint at the fact that Eamonn knows Karamat doesn’t think much of his son, which is part of the reason that Eamonn has gone to Karachi in the first place.
Themes
Eamonn concludes that Aneeka has been abused for “daring to love while covering her head” and “reviled for her completely legal protests against a decision by the home secretary that suggests personal animus.” He asks Karamat directly where the crime is in wanting to return Parvaiz’s body home. Karamat is heartbroken by his son’s words.
Eamonn’s video blurs the line between personal and political, as he shows how the ideological divide between families like the Lones and families like the Pashas end up hurting everyone. And in setting himself firmly on Aneeka’s side and questioning his father’s motivations, he is completely betraying his own family—just as Parvaiz betrayed his own.
Themes
Get the entire Home Fire LitChart as a printable PDF.
Karamat goes to the headquarters of the home office. News of Eamonn’s video is already in the morning papers; someone must have leaked the video ahead of time. The main article paints Karamat as an ambitious son of migrants who married money and class to be elected; they call him a person who “used his identity as a Muslim to win, then jettisoned it when it started to damage him.”
Just as the news has painted other characters based on stereotypes (Parvaiz as a terrorist, Aneeka as manipulative and sexually promiscuous), Karamat gets the same treatment as a calculating politician. Yet Shamsie has shown through the chapters from each character’s perspective that there is more to each of their stories.
Themes
In response to Eamonn’s video, Karamat prepares a video that was shot by the media unit for which Parvaiz had been working—a “backup plan to remind the public that the only story here was that of a British citizen who had turned his back on his nation”—though he hopes not to have to use the video of a head rolling in the sand. He wonders if Aneeka even knows the person her brother was.
At first, Karamat’s only response is to sharpen the divide between himself and Aneeka and Parvaiz, now that he believes his son has squarely turned his back on him. He again emphasizes the idea that Parvaiz’s involvement with ISIS and Aneeka’s faith and attempt to retrieve her brother make them traitors to their nationality, but the reader knows that Parvaiz really wasn’t the violent person Karamat is imagining here.
Themes
Terry then texts Karamat, telling him to come home or else she is going to move out to a hotel. He goes home and finds his daughter, Emily, whom he describes as “the son he’d never had.” She tells him that she’s come to get Eamonn back and take him with her to New York while things blow over. Terry then comes into the room, and Emily leaves so that Terry and Karamat can talk together. Terry asks him why he can’t leave Aneeka and Parvaiz alone, insisting that now he’s made even more enemies, and that he is soon to lose Eamonn as well. She tells him to fix it.
Terry, unlike Karamat, recognizes that all of these actions are simply serving to divide their family rather than protect it. She recognizes that Karamat has been treating Aneeka and Parvaiz of representatives of a type for a larger political statement, rather than seeing that he is simply hurting two 19-year-olds along with his own son. Terry is also a parallel for the character of Tiresias in Sophocles’s Antigone. Tiresias is a blind prophet who convinces King Creon that punishing Antigone will also destroy her fiancé, Creon’s son Haemon. Tiresias succeeds in convincing Creon, just as Terry succeeds in convincing Karamat here—but in both cases, the change of heart comes too late to save the son.
Themes
Karamat thinks of two memories: first, he remembers comforting Eamonn through his first heartbreak, his son weeping into his father’s chest. Karamat had thought to tell him to take it on the chin, but instead he just pulled him closer, grateful that Eamonn had turned to him for comfort. The second memory is of himself reading aloud from the Quran to his mother on the night that she died. He wonders who would do the same for him, and he resolves to fix what he has done.
Even though Karamat sees and desires the wider political implications of fixing this situation, he believes that above all else, his son should come first. Here, he finally recognizes that his son truly is what he has made him, and that even if his son has not fully met his expectations, the bonds of family are more important than anything else.
Themes
Suddenly, Karamat’s security detail leads Karamat, Terry, and Emily down into the basement bathroom—a safe room. There has been “chatter” about an imminent attack, and they have to stay inside for their own protection. Karamat tries to think of something comforting to say, but instead he can only say that he is sorry. After a time that seems endless, the head of Karamat’s detail gives the all-clear, explaining that it is safe to come out. They explain that it must have been a hoax, because the people are claiming that they’ve got Karamat, and they clearly haven’t.
The true tragedy of the story is that Karamat’s recognition of the error of his decisions comes too late. Even though he soon means to do the right thing and allow Aneeka and Parvaiz to return home, his own pride, the intolerant policies that he has put forth, and the tense relationship with his son have already led to his own family’s endangerment, and ultimately to the death of the son he was trying to protect.
Themes
Every television channel replays the footage: Eamonn walking into the park, calling out to Aneeka, who seems unaware of him, her face pressed into Parvaiz’s coffin of ice. Two men step into Eamonn’s path, greeting him. When Eamonn approaches them, they immediately lock a belt of explosives around him and run away. Everyone panics and starts to run, but Aneeka realizes for the first time that Eamonn is there. Eamonn shouts at her to run away, but she instead runs toward him. She holds him, and he kisses her shoulder. For a moment, they just look like happy lovers in a beautiful park.
This conclusion mirrors that of Sophocles’s Antigone: Eamonn is destroyed alongside Aneeka, just as Haemon dies immediately after Antigone.The climax of the novel bears out all of the previous conflicts: the betrayals between family members have driven Aneeka and Eamonn to Pakistan; Parvaiz’s and Eamonn’s strained relationships with their fathers have led to their deaths; and ultimately, the feeling that British Muslims are forced to choose between their faith and their nationality has set the stage for horrific acts like this one. Yet even though the novel ends in tragedy, the calm final image expresses some hope that someday, people like Aneeka and Eamonn might be able to come together and be at peace, free of the judgment and hatred of others.
Themes
