Kamila Shamsie - Home Fire

It felt neither and both a long and a short time that he stood there, memorizing his father’s image, before the door opened and two strangers entered, one of them bearing enough resemblance to Farooq for Parvaiz to work out that they were the cousins he lived with.

His words of greeting went unanswered. Instead the cousins walked over to the bolt in the floor and looped a chain through it.

“Come on,” one of them said impatiently. Parvaiz approached them, uncertain what it was they needed his help with.

Then he was on the ground, one cousin straddling his legs, the other his chest. The one on his legs tied the chain around his ankles, the one on his chest slapped him to stop him from struggling, and then both of them maneuvered him into a squatting position and used the chain to shackle his wrists to his ankles. When he called out Farooq’s name they laughed in a way that made him stop.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“We’ve done it already,” one of the cousins replied.

They both stood up, walked over to the TV, and started to play a video game, the volume turned so high that even if he shouted again no one would hear. It didn’t take long to understand what the cousin meant. The chain so short that it was impossible either to straighten up or topple over entirely, and he could only remain hunched in a squatting position, the pressure on his back increasing by the minute. What started as discomfort eventually became pain, shooting from his back down through his legs. When he tried to move — tried to find a way to roll onto his side — the chains cut into his flesh. Layered into the pain was the torment of not understanding why he deserved it and what he could do to make it stop. He heard his voice begging to be set free, but the two men didn’t even look in his direction. The video game sound designer hadn’t accounted for cheap speakers, and the crackling and distortion were more intolerable than the gunfire and death screams. He tried prayer but it did nothing.

Sunshine left the room. Clouds or evening, he couldn’t tell. Even the relief of unconsciousness eluded him. Scorpions of fire were under his skin, frantic to escape — they raced from his shoulders to his calves, their stingers whiplike. Every crackle from the speakers was magnified until it became a physical force attacking his ears. He was screaming in pain, had been screaming in pain for a long time.

One of the cousins pressed pause.

The sounds of the everyday rushed to embrace him — rattling windows, traffic, his breath. The two men walked over, unshackled him. For a moment there was release, his body collapsing onto the ground, but then they picked him up, carried him to the kitchen sink, which was filled with water, and dunked his head in.

So, he was going to die. Here, above a chicken shop, just a mile or so from home. How would his sisters bear it, after all they’d lost? The men pulled his head out, he breathed in a lungful of air, they dunked him again. This went on. He told himself he wouldn’t breathe in next time, but his body wanted to live. They pulled him out; the air had an increased concentration of Farooq’s cologne in it; he braced himself for the next immersion, but instead they carried him over to the pile of mattresses and threw him facedown on it.

A hand touched his head, tenderly. “Now you begin to see,” Farooq’s voice said, full of sorrow.

The only response Parvaiz had was tears, and Farooq turned him over so that Parvaiz could see that the older man was crying too.

“They did this to your father for months,” Farooq said.

The cousins had left the flat. There was only Farooq, stroking Parvaiz’s arm, helping him into a sitting position. When Farooq stood up, Parvaiz reached out and held his leg.

“No, I won’t leave you again,” Farooq said. “I’m just getting something from the kitchen.”

If he turned his head he’d be able to see what Farooq was doing, but all he could do was stay as he was, breathing in and out, feeling the stabbing, shooting pain move from back to lungs to legs. Farooq returned, held a hot water bottle to his back, handed him an ice cream stick wrapped in a chocolate shell. He bit down into it, felt sweetness spread through his mouth, remembered pleasure.

When he’d finished, licking every clinging bit of ice cream off the stick, Farooq took the photograph off the wall and placed it into his hands.

“How much do you know about what they did to prisoners in Bagram?”

Parvaiz shook his head. It was all he was capable of doing.

“You’ve never tried to find out?”

A shorter shake of the head, ashamed now. It had always been there just out of the corner of his eye, the knowledge of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but he had never looked closely. Because he didn’t want anyone to ask why he was so interested. That was the reason he’d always given himself.

Farooq rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. You were a child, alone. You weren’t ready for it. But that’s changed now, hasn’t it?”

A child, alone. He’d never been alone. There had always been Aneeka. Even when she was different, she was still there. He looked at the iron bolt in the floor, thought of Aneeka saying they should sell the house. She was unlinking the chains that held them together, casting him into darkness without the accompanying sound of her heartbeat for the first time since his heart had clenched in terror to find itself dividing into chambers, becoming an organ with the capacity to feel, then relaxed, knowing there was another heart experiencing every moment of fear, every second of wonder alongside it.

Legs still wobbly, he stood up. “I have to go.”

Farooq stood with him and drew him into an embrace. “You’re strong enough to bear this. You’re his son, after all.”

Parvaiz pulled away, walked out without saying anything. Please come home, he texted his twin while going down the stairs.

He was on the 79 bus home, just a few minutes later, when she texted back. Urgent? Class ends in 20.

He rested his temple against the window of the bus and watched the familiar world pass by. “Sicko,” “creep”—those would be the words she’d use about Farooq, and she’d make him swear on their mother’s grave never to see the man again. But the farther the bus took him from Farooq’s flat the more he felt he was in the wrong place. 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 texted back: Haha just testing your devotion. Don’t make me have another night of takeaway and Isma.

Idiot, you worried me, she responded. Paper due tomorrow so working late in the library. Will stay at Gita’s tonight.

He slid the phone into his pocket. Near the front of the bus a man was tapping his wedding ring against a yellow handrail. The sound, metal on metal, was chains unlinking.

Parvaiz sat down on the stool near the till in the greengrocer’s, wiping the back of his hand against his mouth, surrounded by a lie. Asparagus and plantains and okra and Scotch bonnet peppers and bird’s-eye chilis and samphire and cabbage and bitter gourd. Nat, the greengrocer, said the world was divided into two kinds of people: those who regularly ate fresh food, and those who didn’t. With each new influx of migrants to the neighborhood, he’d ask, What do they eat? and add to his stock accordingly. Pakistanis, West Indians, Albanians — they were all fine by Nat. His shelves bursting with freshness and color, the promise of family meals and welcoming neighbors.