Kamila Shamsie: Home Fire

A voice on the other side — Jones, was it? — said, “We’ll get you out as soon as possible,” as though the home secretary and his wife and daughter were in a malfunctioning elevator. The English, sometimes. Even when they were Welsh. He reached into his pocket, but the phone wasn’t there. On the table waiting for James’s text. Emily and Terry didn’t have theirs either. Banged on the door again. “I’m going to need something more than that.”

“Sir, we picked up chatter. About an imminent attack.”

“This isn’t helpful,” Terry said, her arms around their daughter. He should go over to join them, think of something comforting to say, but instead he sat down, back to the tiled wall. What could he say? That they would be all right?

“I’m sorry,” he said, and waited for one of them to tell him it wasn’t his fault.

Terry turned her face away from him, started speaking in a clear, practical tone to their daughter, explaining security protocols, the safety features of this room, the likelihood that chatter meant nothing was going to happen because why would anyone broadcast plans of an attack that they actually intended to carry out? “Blast-proof”… “bulletproof”… “air supply.” These were the words with which she reassured their child.

How beautiful they both were, his wife and daughter. While his enemies were out there playing politics to bring him down — leaks and innuendos and muckraking, the stuff that gave Westminster a bad name — he was in a reinforced steel box with his wife and daughter while terrorists tried to kill him. He cupped his hands together like a man about to pray or a father cradling his infant son’s head. Or a politician examining the lines of his palm. He didn’t believe in any form of mumbo jumbo but someone once told him that according to palmistry the lines on your left palm represent the destiny you were born with and the lines on your right the destiny you make for yourself. It had since pleased him to note the wide divergence of the two. Heart line, head line, fate line, life line. At what point had he made himself into a man who thought of saving his political career while his daughter was in need of a father’s reassurance? He patted the floor next to him and took her hand in his when she sat down, her head on his shoulder. Counted her fingers as he’d done when she was born, though until Eamonn he’d always thought that was some myth of parenting that no one actually did.

“Your mother’s right,” he said. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, go online.” That got a small laugh. “To be honest, I’m pretty sure Suarez is pretending this is a bigger deal than it is as a sort of drill. That’s the way he is. Likes to be very certain all his men — and women, before you correct me — know how to act under pressure.”

“Are you saying this to make me feel better?”

“I’m the Lone Wolf. I don’t say things to make people feel better.” He bared his teeth at her, and she smiled at him, trustingly.

Still children into their twenties, this generation. By Emily’s age he’d already faced down so much of the ugliness of the world. Had fun doing it too, in places. And for all the political wrongheadedness of the Anti-Nazi League, they’d won. Wasn’t he proof of that? Who would have thought in the days he walked around with his RACISTS ARE BAD IN BED badge, spoiling for a fistfight or a fuck, whichever came along, that someone like him could end up where he was now? And if he had thought it, if someone had said he’d be the home secretary in a safe room while men prowled outside trying to kill him, he’d have known without asking that the men were neo-Nazi skinheads. But how dare they — how dare it be his people . After everything his generation did to make this country better for them, how dare they. Personal animus — hell, yes!

“Dad?” Emily said, and he loosened the pressure on her hand.

How were they planning to do it? A truck packed with dynamite on a parallel street, a detonation that would destroy the whole neighborhood? Were they in the sewer system? Had they infiltrated his security detail? He looked at Terry.

“Breathe,” she mouthed, and came to sit on the other side of their daughter.

So he concentrated on that. On breathing; on holding his daughter’s hand. On remembering that there was no correlation between evil and competence. On thinking how he could emerge from this a hero, the party leadership in his grasp. Then back to breathing, back to holding his daughter’s hand.

After what seemed an endless time of silence Emily said, “If Eamonn were here he’d be telling us jokes.”

Karamat glanced at his watch. His son was there now, in Karachi.

He cleared his throat. “Terry, there’s something…”

There was a hammering on the door, Suarez’s all-clear code, and then his voice saying it was safe to come out. Karamat stood up so fast he felt a moment of light-headedness. He turned the lock, heard all the bolts slide out from their positions of protection. Heard his daughter burst into tears of relief, and turned to help her up, Terry doing the same, the three of them clinging together for a moment. When they pulled apart there was Suarez, smiling in relief.

“Just some kind of a hoax, sir. Useful drill for all of us.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they claim they’ve got you, sir, and clearly they haven’t.”

The crackle of a walkie-talkie. A voice on the other end — urgent, horrified.

Every television channel replayed it endlessly:

A man in a navy blue shirt walks into the park. He is recognized, the journalists race forward, he holds up his hand to them, calls out the name of the woman he’s come for. The cameras turn to her. She is the only person unaware, her cheek resting on the lid of ice that has melted to near-transparency. The journalists move back, allow a path from him to her. Into this path step two men in beige shalwar kameezes. “At last you’re here,” says one, and opens his arms wide. The man in the navy blue shirt looks over to the woman, but he’s in a new place, he doesn’t want to offend, he allows himself to be embraced. While one man pulls him against his chest, pinning his arms in place, the other encircles his waist. The two men step away, turn, run. They are climbing the railings out of the park before the man in the navy blue shirt understands the belt they’ve locked around him.

He tugs at it, he yells for a knife, something, anything to cut it off. But everyone is running, toward this exit or that, screams and voices raised to God, who else can save them now? One cameraman, a veteran of carnage, stops at the edge of the park, beyond the blast radius as well as he can judge, turns his lens onto the new emptiness of the field. The woman has stood up now. The man with the explosives around his waist holds up both his hands to stop her from coming to him. “Run!” he shouts. “Get away from me, run!” And run she does, crashing right into him, a judder of the camera as the man holding it on his shoulder flinches in expectation of a blast. At first the man in the navy shirt struggles, but her arms are around him, she whispers something, and he stops. She rests her cheek against his, he drops his head to kiss her shoulder. For a moment they are two lovers in a park, under an ancient tree, sun-dappled, beautiful, and at peace.

Jatinder Verma at Tara Arts gave me the idea of adapting Antigone in a contemporary context. Jatinder, many thanks, and apologies for doing so in the form of a novel rather than a play.

I’m fortunate to continue to have the Santa Maddalena Foundation in my life; thank you to Beatrice Monti for the space to work, and for her friendship and her dogs.