Intriguing tale of fates

‘Home Fire’, by master story teller Kamila Shamsie, is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide. This book has been selected for the 2017 Man Booker Prize Longlist

‘And so you’re doing what you want to be doing? Youlucky thing!’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very lucky.’ She wondered if she shouldrespond to his questions about her life with some abouthis. But then he might mention his father, of whom shecouldn’t pretend to be unaware, and that might leadthem down a road she didn’t want to travel.

The river was dark now, the first indication that theday was ending, although there was still abundant lightin the sky. She led the way back onto the road, bringingthem out near the high school where long-limbedteenagers were running on the outdoor track, piles ofmuddy snow pushed to the corners of the field.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

‘The turban. Isthat a style thing or a Muslim thing?’

‘You know, the only two people in Massachusettswho have ever asked me about it both wanted to knowif it’s a style thing or a chemo thing.’

Laughing, he said, ‘Cancer or Islam – which is thegreater affliction?’

There were still momets when a statement like thatcould catch a person off-guard. He held his hands upquickly in apology.

‘Jesus. I mean, sorry. That came outreally badly. I meant, it must be difficult to be Muslim inthe world these days.’

‘I’d find it more difficult to not be Muslim,’ she said,and after that they walked on in a silence that hadbecome more than a little uncomfortable by the timethey were back on Main Street.

She had assumed thatin some way, however secular, however political ratherthan religious, he identified as Muslim. Though what afoolish thing to assume of his father’s son.

‘Well, goodbye,’ she said, as they approached thecafé, holding out a hand for him to shake, awarethat the gesture was strangely formal only after she’dmade it.

‘Thanks for the company. Perhaps we’ll run into eachother again,’ he said, extracting his shoes and deliveringthe backpack into her extended hand as thoughthat’s what it was there for. Assuming women who woreturbans as ‘a Muslim thing’ couldn’t possibly shakehands with men.

As she walked home she thought howmuch more pleasant life was when you lived amongforeigners whose subtexts you couldn’t hear. That wayyou didn’t need to know that ‘perhaps we’ll run intoeach other again’ really meant ‘I have no particular wishto see you after this’.

Aunty Naseem, the neighbour who had taken the placeof their grandmother when she died and with whomAneeka was now staying, called to say she didn’t wantto worry Isma but could she check on Aneeka?

‘Shestays out so often now, and I thought she was with herfriends, but I just saw Gita and she says the friends don’tsee her very much at all anymore.’

Gita of Preston Road was a link between Aneeka’shome and university life – a year older than the twins andwith a new stepmother who didn’t want her around, shehad a room in halls to which Aneeka had a spare key;Gita herself never used the room because she was livingwith her boyfriend, though none of the older generationknew this.

When Aneeka had first started staying over at Gita’s,either because she was in the library or out socializing in one way or another until after the Tube stoppedrunning, Isma hadn’t been happy about it. All thoseboys at university, whose families no one knew –and unlike Isma, Aneeka had always been someonewhom boys looked at, and who looked back.

Morethan looked, though Aneeka always guarded thatpart of her life from her sister, who was, perhaps, tooinclined to lecture. It was Parvaiz who had talkedIsma into accepting it – if there was anything worryinggoing on with Aneeka he’d know, and he wouldtell Isma if he needed back-up in talking sense to histwin.

But there was no need to start having nightmaresabout Aneeka out alone in the cold, impersonalheart of London – she’d always been good at findingpeople who would look out for her.

There was aninstant appeal in her contradictory characteristics:sharp-tongued and considerate, serious-mindedandcapable of unbridled goofiness, as open to absorbingother people’s pain as she was incapable of acknowledgingthe damage of being abandoned and orphaned(‘I have you and P. That’s enough’).

Where Parvaizand Isma stayed at the margins of all groups so thatno one would start to ask questions about their lives(‘Where is your father? Are the rumours about himtrue?’), Aneeka simply knew how to place herself in themiddle of a gathering, delineate her boundaries, andfashion intimacies around the no-go areas.

Even as avery young girl she’d known how to do this: someonewould approach the subject of their father and Aneekawould turn cold – an experience so disconcerting tothose accustomed to her warmth that they’d quicklyback away, and be rewarded with the return of theAneeka they knew. But now Parvaiz was a no-go areatoo, and not one that Aneeka could confine to a littlecorner of her life.

After the conversation with Aunty Naseem, Isma calledher sister repeatedly, but it was late at night London timebefore she replied. The lamp by her bedside cast a smallpool of light, whichilluminated the book resting on herchest – an Asterix comic, old childhood favourite – butleft her face in darkness.
‘The Migrants have a new car. A BMW. A BMWin our driveway.

What next? A pony? An Aga? An aupair?’ When the tenants had moved into the house inwhich the siblings had grown up, andreplaced the netcurtains with obviously expensive blinds that werealmost always lowered, Aneeka said she sympathized for the first time with residents of a neighbourhood whofelt aggrieved when migrants moved in.

The nicknamehad stuck, despite Isma’s attempts to shift it.

‘I’m surprised you noticed – Aunty Naseem says shehardly sees you. And neither do your uni friends.’
‘I must really be behaving badly if Aunty Naseem isdriven to complaining,’ Aneeka said.
‘She’s concerned, that’s all.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to worry her. Oryou. It’s just easier being on my own these days. I’mlearning why solitude has always been so appealingto you.’

‘I’ll come home. Spring break is starting soon. We canat least have a week together.’

The thought of Londonwas oppressive, but Isma kept that out of her voice.

‘You know you can’t afford it, and anyway, you don’twant to have to go through that airport interrogationagain. What if they don’t let you board this time? Or ifthey give you a hard time when you return to Boston?’

Extracted with permission from Bloomsbury India.