Kamila Shamsie: Home Fire

The cold bit down on every exposed piece of skin before cutting through the layers of clothing. Isma opened her mouth and tilted her head back, breathing in the lip-numbing, teeth-aching air. Crusted snow lay all about, glinting in the lights of the terminal. Leaving her suitcase with Dr. Hira Shah, who had driven two hours across Massachusetts to meet her at Logan Airport, she walked over to a mound of snow at the edge of the parking lot, took off her gloves, and pressed her fingertips down on it. At first it resisted, but then it gave way, and her fingers burrowed into the softer layers beneath. She licked snow out of her palm, relieving the dryness of her mouth. The woman in customer services at Heathrow — a Muslim — had found her a place on the next flight out, without charge; she had spent the whole journey worrying about the interrogation awaiting her in Boston, certain they would detain her or put her on a plane back to London. But the immigration official had asked only where she was going to study, said something she didn’t follow but tried to look interested in regarding the university basketball team, and waved her through. And then, as she walked out of the arrivals area, there was Dr. Shah, mentor and savior, unchanged since Isma’s undergraduate days except for a few silver strands threaded through her cropped dark hair. Seeing her raise a hand in welcome, Isma understood how it might have felt, in another age, to step out on deck and see the upstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty and know you had made it, you were going to be all right.

While there was still some feeling in her gloveless hands she typed a message into her phone: Arrived safely. Through security — no problems. Dr. Shah here. How things with you?

Her sister wrote back: Fine, now I know they’ve let you through,

Really fine?

Stop worrying about me. Go live your life — I really want you to.

The parking lot with large, confident vehicles; the broad avenues beyond; the lights gleaming everywhere, their brightness multiplied by reflecting surfaces of glass and snow. Here, there was swagger and certainty and — on this New Year’s Day of 2015—a promise of new beginnings.

Isma awoke into light to see two figures leaving the sky and falling toward her, bright colors billowing above their heads.

When Hira Shah had brought her to see this studio apartment, the morning after her arrival in America, the landlord had drawn attention to the skylight as a selling point to offset the dank built-in cupboard, and promised her comets and lunar eclipses. With the memory of the Heathrow interrogation still jangling her nerves, she had been able to think only of surveillance satellites wheeling through the sky, and had rejected the studio. But by the end of the day’s viewings it had become clear that she wouldn’t be able to afford anything nicer without the encumbrance of a roommate. Now, some ten weeks later, she could stretch out in the bed, knowing herself to be seeing but unseen. How slowly the parachutists seemed to move, trailing golds and reds. In almost all human history, figures descending from the sky would have been angels or gods or demons — or Icarus hurtling down, his father, Daedalus, following too slowly to catch the vainglorious boy. What must it have felt like to inhabit a commonality of human experience — all eyes to the sky, watching for something mythic to land? She took a picture of the parachutists and sent it to Aneeka with the caption Try this someday? and then stepped out of bed, wondering if spring had arrived early or if this was merely a lull.

Overnight the temperature had climbed vertiginously, melting the snow into a river. She had heard it at her first waking, for the dawn prayer, as it rushed down the gentle slope of the street. It had been a winter of snowstorms, more than usual, she’d been told, and as she dressed she imagined people exiting their homes and, on patches of ground glimpsed for the first time in months, finding lost items — a glove, keys, pens, and pennies. The weight of snow pressing familiarity out of the objects, so that the glove placed beside its former pair looked no more than a distant relative. And what then do you do? Throw away both gloves, or wear them mismatched to acknowledge the miracle of their reunion?

She folded her pajamas and put them under her pillow, smoothed out the duvet. Looked around the clean, spare lines of her apartment — single bed, desk and desk chair, chest of drawers. She felt, as she did most mornings, the deep pleasure of daily life distilled to the essentials: books, walks, spaces in which to think and work.

When she pushed open the heavy door of the two-story stone-veneer house, the morning air was free of its hundred-blade knife for the first time. The thaw had widened the streets and sidewalks, and she felt — what was the word? — “boundless”! as she set off walking at a pace that didn’t worry about slipping on ice. Past double-storied colonial houses, past cars announcing all their political beliefs on bumper stickers, past vintage clothing, past antiques and yoga. She turned onto Main Street, where City Hall with its inexplicable Norman towers inset with arrow slits gave the vista an edge of hilarity.

She made her way into her favorite café and walked down the stairs with a mug in hand to the book-lined basement — a haven of warm lamplight, worn armchairs, and strong coffee. Punched keys on the keyboard to wake her laptop, barely registered from overfamiliarity the desktop picture of her mother as a young woman of the 1980s, big hair and chunky earrings, dropping a kiss on Isma’s infant scalp. As a matter of morning routine, she opened the Skype window to check if her sister was online. She wasn’t, and Isma was about to click out when a new name appeared on the online contacts list: Parvaiz Pasha .

Isma lifted her hands off the keyboard, set them down on either side of the laptop, and looked at her brother’s name. She hadn’t seen it here since that day in December when he’d called to tell them the decision he’d made for his life without any consideration of what it would mean for his sisters. Now he would be looking at her name, the green check mark next to it telling him she was available to chat. The Skype window was positioned so that her mother’s lips were touching it. Zainab Pasha’s slim, fine-boned features had skipped Isma and passed on to the twins, who laughed with their mother’s mouth, smiled with their mother’s eyes. Isma maximized the Skype window so it filled the entire screen, encircled her throat with the palms of her hands, and felt her heart’s reaction to the sight of his name in the high-speed propulsion of blood through her arteries. The seconds passed, and there was nothing from him. She kept watching the screen, just as she knew he was watching his, both for the same reason: waiting for Aneeka.

A few weeks earlier, at Hira Shah’s condo, a strange music had cut through the sound of Hira slicing potatoes — a whistling, high-pitched twang. Isma and Hira checked phones and speakers, placed ears against walls and floorboards, stepped out into the corridor, opened closets, entered empty rooms, and still it kept on, eerie loveliness, impossible to pinpoint as any known instrument, voice, or birdcall. A neighbor stopped by, looking for the source. “Ghosts,” he said with a wink before leaving.

Isma laughed, but Hira drew her shoulders in tighter, reached out to touch the evil eye that hung on her wall, which Isma had always assumed to be merely decorative.

The music kept on, coming from everywhere and nowhere, following them as they moved through the apartment. Hira, gripping her knife, whispered something that turned out to be the Lord’s Prayer — she’d been educated at a convent school in Kashmir. Finally, the supremely rational, razor-minded Dr. Shah said they should go out for dinner despite the unpleasant hail. Perhaps the sound would have stopped by the time they returned. Isma went upstairs to the bathroom to wash the grime of concealed corners off her hands. While standing at the sink, looking out of the window beside it, she saw the source of the music.