Home Fire Quotes

“Do you consider yourself British?” the man said.
“I am British.”
“But do you consider yourself British?”
“I’ve lived here all my life.” She meant there was no other country of which she could feel herself a part, but the words came out sounding evasive.

Parvaiz was the person Aneeka talked to about all her griefs and worries, but it was Isma she came to for an embrace, or a hand to rub her back, or a body to curl up against on the sofa. And when the burden of the universe seemed too great for Isma to bear—particularly in those early days after their grandmother and mother had died within the space of a year, leaving Isma to parent and provide for two grief-struck twelve-year-olds—it was Aneeka who would place her hands on her sister's shoulders and massage away the ache.

All the old muck. He meant the picture of Karamat Lone entering a mosque that had been in the news for its “hate preacher.” LONE WOLF’S PACK REVEALED, the headlines screamed when a tabloid got hold of it, near the end of his first term as an MP. The Lone Wolf's response had been to point out that the picture was several years old, he had been there only for his uncle’s funeral prayers and would otherwise never enter a gender-segregated space. This was followed by pictures of him and his wife walking hand in hand into a church.

Yes, Dr. Shah, if you look at colonial laws you’ll see plenty of precedent for depriving people of their rights; the only difference is this time it’s applied to British citizens, and even that’s not as much of a change as you might think, because they’re rhetorically being made un-British […] The 7/7 terrorists were never described by the media as “British terrorists.” Even when the word “British” was used, it was always “British of Pakistani descent” or “British Muslim” or, my favorite, “British passport holders,” always something interposed between their Britishness and terrorism.

“Parvaiz is not our father. He’s my twin. He’s me. But you, you’re not our sister anymore.”

“Aneeka…”

“I mean it. You betrayed us, both of us. And then you tried to hide it from me. Don’t call, don’t text, don’t send me pictures, don’t fly across the ocean and expect me to ever agree to see your face again. We have no sister.”

“It’s harder for him,” he said. “Because of his background. Early on, in particular, he 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, were because he had a sense of purpose. Public service, national good, British values […].”

There he sat, his father’s son. It didn’t matter if they were on this or that side of the political spectrum, or whether the fathers were absent or present, or if someone else had loved them better, loved them more: in the end they were always their fathers' sons.

“Especially not him. He says you are what you make of yourself.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “Unless you’re his son. Then he indulges you even if you don’t make anything of yourself.”
“He indulges you?”
“Yes. My sister’s like him, so she gets all the expectation. I get the pampering and the free passes.”
“Do you mind that?”
“I mind a lot. And you’re the first person to ever guess that might be the case.”

You are, we are, British. Britain accepts this. So do most of you. But for those of you who are in some doubt about it, let me say this: Don’t set yourself apart in the way you dress, the way you think, the outdated codes of behavior you cling to, the ideologies to which you attach your loyalties. Because if you do, you will be treated differently—not because of racism, though that does still exist, but because you insist on your difference from everyone else in this multiethnic, multireligious, multitudinous United Kingdom of ours. And look at all you miss out on because of it.

The video wouldn’t reveal the things that were most striking about her in those moments: the intensity of her concentration, how completely it could swerve from her God to him in the time she took those few footsteps, or her total lack of self-consciousness in everything she did—love and prayer, the covered head and the naked body.

“That’s my twin. I’ve spent every day the last six months sick with worry about him. Now he wants to come home. But your father is unforgiving, particularly about people like him. So I’m not going to get my brother back. […] half of me is always there, wondering if he’s alive, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I'm so tired of it. I want to be here, completely. With you.”

It was what she’d say if she were still only trying to manipulate him. It was what she’d say if she’d really fallen in love with him.

Who is this posh English boy with my face, the father would say, sometimes with disappointment, sometimes with pride. Who you made me, so blame yourself the son would reply, and his father would respond with either There is no blame, my jaan, my life or That was your mother’s doing, not mine.

“There are still moments of stress when I’ll recite Ayat al-Kursi as a kind of reflex.”

“ls that a prayer?”

“Yes. Ask your girlfriend about it. Actually, no, I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention it to anyone.”

“You shouldn't have to hide that kind of thing.”

“I’d be nervous about a home secretary who’s spoken openly about his atheism but secretly recites Muslim prayers. Wouldn’t you?”

They’d returned most of the items they took, but not the pictures of Adil Pasha climbing a mountain, sitting beside a campfire, wading across a stream—sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other men, always smiling, always with a gun slung over his shoulder or cradled in his lap. When you’re old enough, my son, his father had inscribed inside it, which made Parvaiz’s mother furious for reasons he didn't then understand.

Or Farooq would talk and Parvaiz would listen to those stories of his father for which he’d always yearned—not a footloose boy or feckless husband but a man of courage who fought injustice, saw beyond the lie of national boundaries, kept his comrades’ spirits up through times of darkness.

The ache in his back had begun to recede and he remembered how, before the pain had become too unbearable for any thought beyond his own suffering, he had turned his head toward the wall, toward the photograph of his father, and there was this understanding, I am you, for the first time.

He had survived military training, during which he learned that fear can drive your body to impossible feats, and that the men of his father’s generation who fought jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, all went home to their families for the winter months. That piece of information had made him blubber into his pillow at night, not because it made him understand that his father had never loved him (though he did understand that) but because he finally saw that he was his father’s son in his abandonment of a family who had always deserved better than him.

The things you forget. How it feels to hear someone speak to you with love.

“No, I just. I can’t stay here. I can’t do it. They've taken my passport so I have to but I can’t. I thought if I learned the rules… but I can’t. I can’t. I just want to come home.”

The Turkish government confirmed this morning that the man killed in a drive-by shooting outside the British consulate in Istanbul yesterday was Wembley-born Pervys Pasha, the latest name in the string of Muslims from Britain who have joined ISIS. Intelligence officials were aware that Pasha crossed into Syria last December, but as yet have no information about why he was approaching the British consulate. A terror attack has not been ruled out.

Why the secrecy? Why do you think? Because of men like you with your notepads and your recorders. Because I wanted him to want to do anything for me before I asked him to do something for my brother. Why shouldn't I admit it? What would you stop at to help the people you love most?

[…]

When they left there was Isma, wounded and appalled.

“Don't look at me like that. If you liked him you should have done it yourself. Why didn't you love our brother enough to do it yourself?”

Aneeka “Knickers” Pasha, the 19-year-old twin sister of Muslim fanatic Parvaiz “Pervy” Pasha has been revealed as her brother’s accomplice. She hunted down the Home Secretary's son, Eamonn, 24, and used sex to try and brainwash him into convincing his father to allow her terrorist brother back into England.

“She’s going to look for justice in Pakistan?” That final word spoken with all the disgust of a child of migrants who understands how much his Parents gave up—family, context, language, familiarity—because the nation to which they first belonged had proven itself inadequate to the task of allowing them to live with dignity.

“Please don’t try to develop a spine. You weren’t built for it. Did she give you your first really great blow job, Eamonn? Is that what this is about? Because trust me, there are better ones out there.”

A pause, and then his son’s voice at its most cuttingly posh: “I think we’re done here, Father.”

She couldn’t return to the UK on her Pakistani passport without applying for a visa, which she was certainly welcome to do if she wanted to waste her time and money. As for her British passport, which had been confiscated by the security services when she tried to join her brother in Istanbul, it was neither lost nor stolen nor expired and therefore there were no grounds for her to apply for a new one. Let her continue to be British; but let her be British outside Britain.

Probably a virgin, he thought, and wondered when he’d become the kind of man who reacted in this way to the sight of a woman with a covered head who made no effort to look anything but plain.

She has been abused for the crime of daring to love while covering her head, vilified for believing that she had the right to want a life with someone whose history is at odds with hers, denounced for wanting to bury her brother beside her mother, reviled for her completely legal protests against a decision by the home secretary that suggests personal animus. […] Where is the crime in this? Dad, please tell me, where is the crime?

The man with the explosives around his waist holds up both his hands to stop her from coming to him. “Run!” he shouts. “Get away from me, run!” And run she does, crashing right into him, a judder of the camera as the man holding it on his shoulder flinches in expectation of a blast. At first the man in the navy shirt struggles, but her arms are around him, she whispers something, and he stops. She rests her cheek against his, he drops his head to kiss her shoulder. For a moment they are two lovers in a park, under an ancient tree, sun-dappled, beautiful, and at peace.