Home Fire

by Kamila Shamsie

  He wrote to her: You don’t need to come here and hold my hand. It’ll be ok. I’m going to the consulate now. Will be home soon—biryani when I get there? Page 131 of the recipe book.

  He pressed send, his hands steady.

  ||||||||||||||||||

  It was Farooq, in the end, who was his means of escape. He turned up at the villa-cum-studio one afternoon, catching Parvaiz in a headlock as he stepped off the prayer mat in the covered veranda at the end of Zuhr prayers, and kissing him hard on the temple.

  “My little warrior’s grown up,” he said. “Do you get a lunch break?”

  Abu Raees, who had been praying alongside Parvaiz, tapped Farooq on the arm. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a fighter,” Farooq said, moving his shoulders back, his chest forward in a way Parvaiz had once thought of as impressive and now saw as ridiculous. “And I’m his sponsor.”

  Abu Raees looked as uninterested in this as he did in all conversations suggesting any of his employees had a life beyond the studio. “Early for lunch,” was all he said.

  “I’m driving out soon,” Farooq said, with a tone of self-importance. “Picking up new recruits in Istanbul tomorrow.” Glancing at Parvaiz, he said, “The cousins are getting good at it.”

  Parvaiz forced his face into a look of appreciation. A few weeks earlier, during a dinner of kababs at a restaurant overlooking the Euphrates, the Scotsman confirmed what Parvaiz already half knew: when they’d met, Farooq had been in London to train his cousins as recruiters. Parvaiz had appeared at just the right time to serve as guinea pig. The Scotsman hadn’t really said “guinea pig.” The word “pig” was too haram to pass his lips. Instead, he’d found some other way of expressing it that made Parvaiz out to be an instrument of Allah’s will. From Farooq’s manner now it seemed this was a line Parvaiz was expected to have taken too. Parvaiz imagined running a sword through Farooq’s throat, hearing the gurgle of blood.

  “Take him with you,” Abu Raees said, jerking a thumb at Parvaiz. “I need some equipment for the studio.”

  “If you can organize a pass before I leave,” Farooq said doubtfully, looking at his watch.

  “Of course I can,” Abu Raees said.

  That easy.

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  He stood on the pavement of Meşrutiyet Caddesi, looking at the brick wall with black spikes rising from it that allowed only a partial glimpse of the facade of the consulate. But the view of the red, white, and blue flag that fluttered from the roof, cheerful in all its colors, was uninterrupted. Mo Farah at the Olympics, Aunty Naseem’s commemorative cake tin from the Queen’s Golden Jubilee.

  London. Home.

  Aneeka

  7

  i.

  It was not a possibility her mind knew how to contain. Everyone else in the world, yes. Everyone else in the world, inescapably. Some in stages: their grandfather, for weeks half paralyzed, unable to speak, even his breath unfamiliar. Some in a thunderclap: their mother, dropping dead on the floor of the travel agency where she worked, leaving behind the morning’s teacup with her lipstick on the rim, treasured until the day one of the twins stood up in a rage and swung the cup by its handle, smashing their mother’s mouth (Aneeka thought it was her; Parvaiz insisted it was him). Some in a sleight of hand: their grandmother, awaiting the test results that they had already decided would be presented as a death sentence, crossing the road as a drunk driver took a turn too fast; the doctor called two weeks later with the good news that the tumor was benign. Some as abstraction: their father, never a living presence in their life, dead for years before they knew to attach that word to him. Everyone died, everyone but the twins, who looked at each other to understand their own grief.

  Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; 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; grief made time compress and contract; grief tasted like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. Grief was a shape-shifter, and invisible too; grief could be captured as reflection in a twin’s eye. Grief heard its death sentence the morning you both woke up and one was singing and the other caught the song.

  When she received the words that made her singular for the first time in her life, she pushed them away. It was not true, they meant someone else, it wasn’t him. Where was the proof, bring him to me. No, they couldn’t do these things because it was not him. If it had been him it wouldn’t be this man sitting in Aunty Naseem’s living room bringing the news, a plastic comb sticking out of his breast pocket. He wasn’t one of yours, she told the man; we aren’t yours. Then she left him downstairs, went to her room to catch up on the reading for class she had neglected since her brother had called earlier that day. And now he was sulking because she hadn’t come to him though she promised she would. She locked her door against Aunty Naseem’s knocking and entreating. It wasn’t her fault, they hadn’t let her through. For your own protection, they’d said, taking her passport away, refusing to say when she could get it back. Or no, he wasn’t sulking, he was on his way to her, the texts he had sent stuck somewhere in a foreign network, this happened sometimes, a logjam of communication unable to cross borders for hours or days at a time and then the onslaught of pinging that was every message arriving in triplicate. It had happened with her aunt texting from Karachi six months ago: Where is he? When is he coming? He could at least call to explain, don’t they teach manners in England? He was on his way to her, flying home, watching the stars from his window seat—Castor and Pollux holding hands through the cold, dark night.

  She fell asleep and at some point there were arms around her in that childhood familial way. It wasn’t a surprise, but that made it no less a pleasure to curl into the warmth of a twin and slip deeper into that level of sleep where nightmares can’t reach, held fast by love, a foretaste of heaven.

  ii.

  The sunlight across her eyes was late morning. She turned in bed, her body heavy with sleep and anticipation. No one there but an indentation on the pillow. Out of bed and down the stairs she went, to the voices of Aunty Naseem and her two daughters and sons-in-law, all of whom had skipped work to come over and welcome home the boy whose absence they’d carried as a secret these past six months when everyone else thought he was in Karachi. Kaleem Bhai—Aunty Naseem’s older son-in-law—had even given Aneeka the handset he used on trips to Pakistan so she could send occasional messages seemingly from Parvaiz to his friends missing home not missing the weather camels look so surly because they can never escape their own smell sorry trying to stay off the grid—exploring my inner ascetic. Someone will find out eventually, Kaleem Bhai had said, but she’d known from the start that her brother would never stay away very long.

  But why was it Isma coming toward her—liar, betrayer, but now that Parvaiz was home she could be forgiven. But even so, why was it Isma catching her in a familiar familial embrace, and why the face she knew too well the one that had said Ama’s dead Dadi’s dead, why her voice heavy with tears saying, “I took the first flight when Aunty Naseem called,” and “We’ll always have each other,” when Isma had never been “always”; “always” stretched both forward and back, womb to tomb, “always” was only Parvaiz.

  And why was he back, the man with the plastic comb in his pocket, the representative of the Pakistan High Commission, holding his hands up as she entered the room, apologizing for yesterday, which sh
ould have meant apologizing for bringing them someone else’s grief but instead meant apologizing that he’d failed to lift his cupped hands and recite Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un—We surely belong to Allah and to him we return.

  “No,” she said to the man. “You’re confusing him with someone else. He’s a British citizen; he has nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said, miserably, looking at Isma, who had taken Aneeka’s hand as if one of them were a child in need of help crossing the road. “You’re obviously a good, pious family. You don’t deserve this treatment from your government. This home secretary has a point to prove about Muslims, no?”

  She’d been so preoccupied with waiting to hear from Parvaiz she’d failed to notice Eamonn hadn’t called back.

  iii.

  [CLOSED CAPTIONING]

  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. The man in the white SUV who shot Pasha has not been identified, but security analysts suggest he could have belonged to a rival jihadi group.

  The home secretary spoke just minutes ago to our political correspondent, Nick Rippons, about Pervys Pasha:

  –So we have yet another case of a British citizen who

  –I’m going to cut you off there, Nick. As you know, the day I assumed office I revoked the citizenship of all dual nationals who have left Britain to join our enemies. My predecessor only used these powers selectively, which, as I have said repeatedly, was a mistake.

  –And Pervys Pasha was a dual national?

  –That’s correct. Of Britain and Pakistan.

  –Practically speaking, does this have any consequences now that he’s dead?

  –His body will be repatriated to his home nation, Pakistan.

  –He won’t be buried here?

  –No. We will not let those who turn against the soil of Britain in their lifetime sully that very soil in death.

  – Has his family in London been informed?

  – That’s a matter for the Pakistan High Commission. Excuse me, Nick, that’s all I have time for.

  iv.

  #WOLFPACK

  Just started trending

  #PERVYPASHA

  Just started trending

  #DONTSULLYOURSOIL

  Just started trending

  #GOBACKWHEREYOUCAMEFROM

  Just started trending

  v.

  The kitchen filled with food for mourners who didn’t come.

  Only Gladys phoned. Her daughter had arrived in the afternoon to bundle her in the car and take her to Hastings, where she wasn’t supposed to leave the house until the news cycle stopped replaying the woman with mascara-stained cheeks telling news cameras: “He was a beautiful, gentle boy. Don’t you try to tell me who he was. I knew him from the day he was born. Shame on you, Mr. Home Secretary. Shame on you! Give us our boy to bury, give his mother the company of her son in the grave.”

  vi.

  @gladysinraqqa

  Tweets 2 Following 0 Followers 2,452

  Ooh such beautiful boys, let me lift my veil to see them better—oh, I’m being gently #crucified.

  Come on boys, look at me, I can do things those 72 virgins don’t know about. #MaybeThisIsntHeaven

  vii.

  What was this? Not grief. Grief she knew. Grief was the stepsibling they’d grown up with, unwanted and inevitable. Grief the amniotic fluid of their lives. Grief she could look in the eyes while her twin stared over its shoulder and told her of the world that lay beyond. Grief changed its shape to fit your contours—enveloping you as a second skin you eventually learned to slip into and resume your life. Grief was the deal God struck with the angel of death, who wanted an unpassable river to separate the living from the dead; grief the bridge that would allow the dead to flit among the living, their footsteps overhead, their laughter around the corner, their posture recognizable in the bodies of strangers you would follow down the street, willing them never to turn around. Grief was what you owed the dead for the necessary crime of living on without them.

  But this was not grief. It did not cleave to her, it flayed her. It did not envelop her, it leaked into her pores and bloated her beyond recognition. She did not hear his footsteps or his laughter, she no longer knew how to hunch down and inhabit his posture, she couldn’t look into a mirror and see his eyes looking back at her.

  This was not grief. It was rage. It was his rage, the boy who allowed himself every emotion but rage, so it was the unfamiliar part of him, that was all he was allowing her now, it was all she had left of him. She held it to her breast, she fed it, she stroked its mane, she whispered love to it under the starless sky, and sharpened her teeth on its gleaming claws.

  viii.

  The police came around, notepads on knee, recorders in hand, received as their due Isma’s thanks for not insisting on an interview at Scotland Yard.

  “Why won’t you let him come home? He wanted to come home, he was trying to come home.”

  They weren’t there to talk about Parvaiz, they were SO1, Specialist Protection, assigned to the home secretary.

  “Oh. This is about Eamonn?”

  Isma had lifted the teapot to pour a cup for the policemen and seemed to forget what she intended to do with it, holding it motionless just a few inches off the table, looking at her sister, color rising from her throat to her face.

  “I was with him because I thought he could help. Ask him, he’ll tell you, I wanted my brother to be able to come back. It’s all I want now. 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? Well, you obviously don’t love anyone very much if your love is contingent on them always staying the same.”

  Watching Isma, who had set the teapot down without pouring it and was staring at her. Suspecting something that had never occurred to her before. What might she have felt about it were there space for other feelings?

  “There’s no need for any such warning. What good would it do me to contact him now?”

  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?”

  ix.

  “Aneeka. Can I come up?”

  “Why? I don’t want to see you, and now you know about Eamonn you don’t want to see me either.”

  “You’re the only family I have left. There’s nothing bigger than that.”

  “What’s that noise?”

  “The movers packing up inside.”

  “Have they left? The Migrants?”

  “Yes. We have their expensive blinds and an electric kettle with four heat settings in place of next month’s rent.”

  “You’re blaming him, aren’t you? For the loss of your posh tenants.”

  “Stop acting as if you’re the only one whose heart is broken. He was my baby boy.”

  “And Eamonn? What was he? I think you mind about him more than Parvaiz.”

  “Why do you want to be so hurtful? He was five minutes of my life. You two were my life. I’m coming up.”

  “You never did when he was sitting here.”

  “Move up a little, won’t you?”

  “I don’t think he wants you here.”

  “He’s beyond wanting now.”

  “I don’t want you
here. You betrayed him.”

  “That isn’t why he’s dead. That has nothing to do with why he’s dead. You have to forgive me. Please, I’m sorry, forgive me.”

  “Do you believe in heaven and hell?”

  “Only as parables. A god of mercy wouldn’t condemn any of his creation to eternal suffering.”

  “So what happens after death?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Our dead watch over us, I know that. They’re trying to speak to me today, to tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Nothing. There is nothing to do for me. What are you willing to do for him?”

  “I pray for him, for his soul.”

  “What about his body?”

  “That’s just a shell.”

  “Hold a shell up to your ear and you can still hear the ocean it came from.”

  “Hmm. So, what do you believe happens after death?”

  “I don’t know the things you know. Life, death, heaven, hell, god, soul. I only know Parvaiz.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants to come home. He wants me to bring him home, even in the form of a shell.”

  “You can’t.”

  “That isn’t reason not to try.”

  “How?”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Why can you never understand the position we’re in? We can’t even say the kinds of things Gladys said, we don’t have that liberty. Remember him in your heart and your prayers, as our grandmother remembered her only son. Go back to uni, study the law. Accept the law, even when it’s unjust.”