Kamila Shamsie: Home Fire

“There’s been some speculation about my whereabouts these last few days,” Eamonn said, handsome and well rested. The close-up shot showed nothing of his surroundings, only a white wall behind him, his shoulders broad and trustworthy in a button-down navy blue shirt. His eyes moved — to whom? — then settled back on the camera lens. “I admit, I’ve been paralyzed by indecision”—he made it sound like an actual ailment—“caught between the two people I love most in the world: my father and my fiancée.”

“Ah, no,” said James, moved beyond expletives by the damaging awfulness of the word “fiancée.”

“I had hoped my father would change his thinking about this, but I understand now that won’t happen. Let me clear something up. Aneeka Pasha didn’t come looking for me. I went to her house looking for her. While carrying a gift of M&M’s from her sister, who I had had the privilege of spending some time with in America.”

Nice touch there, the M&M’s. Who was it behind the camera whom Eamonn just looked at again?

“It’s true I didn’t know right away about her brother, but I did know that her father had been a jihadi, that he’d gone to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, was held — and possibly tortured — at Bagram, and died on his way to Guantánamo. Like almost any other Brit, I despise the choices Adil Pasha made, and I despise the manner of his dying. But the indefensible facts of his life and death make Aneeka and her sister, Isma, extraordinary women. In the face of tremendous difficulties — including the death of their mother when they were very young…”

How earnest he looked, how good , as he continued to speak of the trials and glories of the Pasha sisters. Faith in human nature positively rolling off him. Silly clot, as if this were a time in which anyone would trust the idealistic.

“We fell in love. God, all my friends are going to have a go at me for that — we don’t just come out and say things like that in public, do we? But there we are. It’s my truth.”

When had this phrase become so popular, “my truth”? Hateful expression, something so egocentric in it. And something so cynical, also, about all those absolute truths in the world.

“I don’t know why I was lucky enough for her to feel that way about me — my father, who knows me well enough to know that I don’t deserve a woman that wonderful, tells me she must have been pretending—”

“Ouch,” said James under his breath.

“—but there was never any pretense between us. And that’s why she told me about her brother when she agreed to spend her life with me. I can’t tell you how hideous it’s been to see how that admission — which took so much courage for her to make, and showed such trust in me — has made people paint her as… as… I can’t really say the words.”

Embarrassing. That’s all this was. “How much more of this is there, James?”

“Don’t know, sir. Didn’t seem right to watch it before you did,” said James, furiously examining the pattern on the carpet.

“It’s true that I went to my father, the home secretary, almost immediately to talk to him about Parvaiz Pasha. Not because my fiancée had asked for any favors but because, as a son, I felt honor-bound to tell my father that my personal life and his professional life were bound to collide. You see, I knew Parvaiz Pasha was trying to get to the British consulate in Istanbul — not for some act of terrorism, but because he wanted a new passport that would allow him to return home. I have shared this information with Counter Terrorism officials — I’m sure Aneeka has done the same — and it’s unclear to me why the British public has been allowed to continue thinking that terrorism was his motive for being where he was at the time of his murder — which I’m sure was carried out by those he almost succeeded in escaping.”

Oh don’t, son, don’t make him out to be a hero. They’ll never forgive you that.

“But Parvaiz Pasha is not my concern. I never met him and it’s true, I don’t know what he did, what crimes he might have committed while in Syria. I do, though, know his sister. The woman you’ve been watching on your TV screens is a woman who has endured terrible trials, whose country, whose government, and whose fiancée turned away from her at a moment of profound personal loss. She has been abused for the crime of daring to love while covering her head, vilified for believing that she had the right to want a life with someone whose history is at odds with hers, denounced for wanting to bury her brother beside her mother, reviled for her completely legal protests against a decision by the home secretary that suggests personal animus. Is Britain really a nation that turns people into figures of hate because they love unconditionally? Unconditionally but not uncritically. While her brother was alive that love was turned toward convincing him to return home; now he’s dead it’s turned to convincing the government to return his body home. Where is the crime in this? Dad, please tell me, where is the crime?”

So this was what heartbreak felt like. Karamat acknowledged it, allowed it, arms dangling helplessly from his side. Personal animus. That was an arrow dipped in a poison only those closest to him could know to use. Whoever was standing behind the camera, whoever had honed Eamonn’s words, whoever had chosen that particular shade of blue that the color psychologists insisted instilled confidence and trust — it didn’t matter. It was Eamonn who mixed the poison, fired the arrow. He knew it to be a lie, he knew that of all lies it was the one that would hurt his father the most, he knew that once he’d said it he gave carte blanche to every one of Karamat Lone’s political opponents to repeat the claim. If a son doesn’t recognize personal animus, who does? Fathers and sons, sons and fathers. An Asian family drama dragged into Parliament. He clenched his fists, pulled them up to rest on the arms of his chair, muscles taut along his back and shoulders. Where the body leads, the mind learns how to follow. He breathed in slowly, pacing his thoughts along with his breath, the chess player in him seeing the move just made then examining the whole board.

James waited silently until the home secretary turned to look at him. “What do we do now, sir?”

“We do nothing. He’s, excuse the expression, digging his own grave.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s go to the office and watch it unfold.”

“Will you be wanting a few minutes with your wife before we leave?”

“James, until this thing is over I don’t have a son and I don’t have a wife. I have a great office of state. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Karamat returned to his room, opened the cupboard, and looked at his tie rack. There were more blues than any other color, but today his hand reached for a matte red — strong but subtle, the tie of a man assured of his own power.

He arrived at Marsham Street along with the first editions of the morning papers, which he still insisted on reading in print. His face, half in light, half in darkness, like some comic book villain, was above the fold of the newspaper most closely allied to his party. NATIONAL INTEREST OR PERSONAL ANIMUS? asked the headline.

“Someone must have leaked the video to them ahead of time,” James said unnecessarily.

“Stand outside the door and don’t let anyone in. I don’t care if it’s the Queen herself.” The building was empty, most of London asleep. He simply wanted to be left alone.

The first paragraph gave him the phrase “anonymous cabinet member,” which, when put together with the name of the journalist, almost certainly meant the chancer. The anonymous cabinet member reflected on the irreversible damage to the home secretary if his son had been seen attending the funeral of a terrorist—“of course he’d do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.” Such a simple line of attack, as the most effective ones always were.