Familial Love, Protection, and Betrayal Theme Analysis

In Home Fire, family members deeply love one another and they often go to extreme lengths to ensure their loved ones are protected. Karamat Lone, the father of one of the central families, ensures this for his son, Eamonn; Isma Pasha (the head of the other central family) does the same for her younger sister, Aneeka; and Aneeka looks out for her twin brother, Parvaiz. Yet frequently, what characters covertly do to protect their family members is not always what those family members believe to be best, and thus their actions often feel like betrayals. Shamsie therefore argues that even the tightest family bonds can be broken when individuals’ strategies for protecting their loved ones differ and are mired in secrecy.

Twenty-eight-year-old Isma and her nineteen-year-old sister, Aneeka, share a very close relationship, yet their differing strategies in attempting to protect their family create a deep rift between them that remains unresolved by the end of the novel. Isma is fiercely loyal to her twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz, having cared for them after their mother, Zainab, died when the twins were 12 and Isma was 19. Isma frequently describes the strength of the love between herself and her sister in particular, which allowed them to care for each other through the deaths of their parents and grandmother. But when Parvaiz abandons their family to join ISIS, Isma in turn tries to protect what remains of her family by informing the police of his actions. Aneeka views this action as a betrayal of her brother, arguing that Parvaiz can no longer return home if he wants to. Isma tries to explain to Aneeka that the police would have found out about Parvaiz anyway, and that they can’t afford to “let the state question [their] loyalties,” but Aneeka refuses to hear this and she is exceptionally hurt. She subsequently refuses to talk to Isma, illustrating how even the best of intentions can be viewed as a betrayal and how such actions can split a family up. Aneeka, in turn, feels a deep love for Isma, but an even deeper love for Parvaiz. Eamonn notes that “In [Aneeka’s] tales of growing up, [Parvaiz] was her ever-present partner in crime, the shadow who sometimes strode ahead, sometimes followed behind, without ever becoming detached from their twinness.” But Aneeka’s attempts to rescue Parvaiz lead to her own betrayals, which create an even deeper rift between her and Isma. Whereas Isma relinquishes hope that her brother could ever return, Aneeka attempts to find a way to get him home. Aneeka starts a relationship with Eamonn Lone in the hopes that she can one day get his father, Home Secretary Karamat Lone, to help return Parvaiz to Britain. Ultimately, Aneeka also falls in love with Eamonn as their relationship develops, but when Isma discovers the motivations behind Aneeka’s actions, she is appalled and betrayed. Isma tries to reconcile with Aneeka, but her attempts to connect with her sister only drive Aneeka to more extreme actions: she goes to Pakistan to retrieve Parvaiz’s body. This results in Aneeka’s death, as she killed in a terrorist attack in Pakistan. Throughout, Isma and Aneeka are driven by a shared desire to protect their family, but they can never agree about the best way to do so. Thus, Shamsie illustrates how family can be torn apart by perceived betrayals that are borne of different ideas about what protecting a family really means.

Karamat, too, tries to protect his son from being taken advantage of or used for political gain, but like Isma and Aneeka’s story, his strategy to prevent Eamonn from making senseless decisions only drives him further away from the family. Once Eamonn realizes that he wants to marry Aneeka and he learns of her brother’s past, he approaches his father to tell him the full story and to ask whether he can help return Parvaiz to Britain. Karamat instead calls him a “stupid boy” for letting Aneeka take advantage of him. He calls Aneeka the “nexus of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State” and he insists that Eamonn not have any further contact with Aneeka. In a later conversation in which Eamonn once again tries to plea for Aneeka, Karamat mocks Eamonn, asking, “did she give you your first really great blow job, Eamonn?” Karamat is attempting to show the degree to which Eamonn has been manipulated and to prevent the inevitable media frenzy to follow. However, these comments come as a complete betrayal to Eamonn, who has truly fallen in love with Aneeka, and they drive him to join her in Pakistan. This ultimately leads to both their deaths, when terrorists target Eamonn in retribution for Karamat’s discriminatory policies. Thus, Karamat’s actions only serve to further divide his family rather than to protect it as he intended, because Eamonn perceives those actions as betrayal rather than protection.

The story leaves the two families in a mountain of grief. The tragedy of Aneeka and Eamonn’s deaths is highlighted by the fact that they both go to Pakistan in defiance of their families, whom they felt had completely betrayed them. Without that sense of betrayal, the families might have been able to keep their bonds strong and keep their members out of danger. Thus, Shamsie argues that no one person in a family can carry out a unilateral strategy for its protection: the only way that these families could have remained intact is by foregoing the secrecy and instead trying to maintain their families in an open and honest manner.