Home Fire

by

Kamila Shamsie

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Parvaiz Pasha Character Analysis

Parvaiz is Aneeka’s twin brother, Isma’s younger brother, and one of the five protagonists of the novel. Parvaiz is a stand-in for the character of Polynices in Sophocles’s Antigone, but in the play, Polynices has already died when the story begins and much of the action focuses on his sister Antigone’s attempts to bury him. In the novel, Parvaiz’s chapter begins when he is 19 and Isma is set to leave for the United States in a few months. While Aneeka is about to start university, Parvaiz feels that his options are limited, as he has not received any scholarships, and on top of that he and Aneeka now have to move out of their home because Isma is leaving. Parvaiz is very interested in sound design, but there are few avenues that allow him to pursue this. Just before Isma leaves, Parvaiz is approached by a man named Farooq, who claims to know other jihadis who knew Parvaiz’s father, Adil. Parvaiz is instantly intrigued, and he devours all of the heroic stories that Farooq has to tell about Adil. His relationship with Farooq, which also makes him feel connected to his father, eventually leads him to leave for Raqqa, Syria, to join the cause that his father supported. But when he sees the violence that ISIS is perpetrating and that he is filming as a part of their media unit, he quickly realizes his mistake and begs Aneeka to find a way to get him home. But before he can reach the British consulate in Turkey, he is shot and killed by Farooq for betraying them. His story illustrates two major themes in Shamsie’s story. First, Parvaiz’s actions how sons are often affected—to their detriment—by the paths of their fathers. Second, Parvaiz is bound by stereotypes: after his death, people assume that Parvaiz is a violent terrorist who does not deserve to be buried in Britain, despite his remorse and the fact that he never perpetrated an attack. Thus, Shamsie asks readers not to rely on stereotypes in evaluating characters like Parvaiz, and instead argues for recognizing the nuances of their lives.

Parvaiz Pasha Quotes in Home Fire

The Home Fire quotes below are all either spoken by Parvaiz Pasha or refer to Parvaiz Pasha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Islam, Nationality, and Identity. Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 – Isma Quotes

“Do you consider yourself British?” the man said.
“I am British.”
“But do you consider yourself British?”
“I’ve lived here all my life.” She meant there was no other country of which she could feel herself a part, but the words came out sounding evasive.

Related Characters: Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha
Related Symbols: Hijab
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

Parvaiz was the person Aneeka talked to about all her griefs and worries, but it was Isma she came to for an embrace, or a hand to rub her back, or a body to curl up against on the sofa. And when the burden of the universe seemed too great for Isma to bear—particularly in those early days after their grandmother and mother had died within the space of a year, leaving Isma to parent and provide for two grief-struck twelve-year-olds—it was Aneeka who would place her hands on her sister's shoulders and massage away the ache.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 – Isma Quotes

Yes, Dr. Shah, if you look at colonial laws you’ll see plenty of precedent for depriving people of their rights; the only difference is this time it’s applied to British citizens, and even that’s not as much of a change as you might think, because they’re rhetorically being made un-British […] The 7/7 terrorists were never described by the media as “British terrorists.” Even when the word “British” was used, it was always “British of Pakistani descent” or “British Muslim” or, my favorite, “British passport holders,” always something interposed between their Britishness and terrorism.

Related Characters: Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Hira Shah
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:

“Parvaiz is not our father. He’s my twin. He’s me. But you, you’re not our sister anymore.”

“Aneeka…”

“I mean it. You betrayed us, both of us. And then you tried to hide it from me. Don’t call, don’t text, don’t send me pictures, don’t fly across the ocean and expect me to ever agree to see your face again. We have no sister.”

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’s harder for him,” he said. “Because of his background. Early on, in particular, he had to be more careful than any other MP, and at times that meant doing things he regretted. But everything he did, even the wrong choices, were because he had a sense of purpose. Public service, national good, British values […].”

There he sat, his father’s son. It didn’t matter if they were on this or that side of the political spectrum, or whether the fathers were absent or present, or if someone else had loved them better, loved them more: in the end they were always their fathers' sons.

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 – Eamonn Quotes

“That’s my twin. I’ve spent every day the last six months sick with worry about him. Now he wants to come home. But your father is unforgiving, particularly about people like him. So I’m not going to get my brother back. […] half of me is always there, wondering if he’s alive, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I'm so tired of it. I want to be here, completely. With you.”

It was what she’d say if she were still only trying to manipulate him. It was what she’d say if she’d really fallen in love with him.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:

Who is this posh English boy with my face, the father would say, sometimes with disappointment, sometimes with pride. Who you made me, so blame yourself the son would reply, and his father would respond with either There is no blame, my jaan, my life or That was your mother’s doing, not mine.

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Karamat Lone (speaker), Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 – Parvaiz Quotes

They’d returned most of the items they took, but not the pictures of Adil Pasha climbing a mountain, sitting beside a campfire, wading across a stream—sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other men, always smiling, always with a gun slung over his shoulder or cradled in his lap. When you’re old enough, my son, his father had inscribed inside it, which made Parvaiz’s mother furious for reasons he didn't then understand.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq, Zainab Pasha
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:

Or Farooq would talk and Parvaiz would listen to those stories of his father for which he’d always yearned—not a footloose boy or feckless husband but a man of courage who fought injustice, saw beyond the lie of national boundaries, kept his comrades’ spirits up through times of darkness.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq, Zainab Pasha, Isma’s grandmother
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 – Parvaiz Quotes

He had survived military training, during which he learned that fear can drive your body to impossible feats, and that the men of his father’s generation who fought jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, all went home to their families for the winter months. That piece of information had made him blubber into his pillow at night, not because it made him understand that his father had never loved him (though he did understand that) but because he finally saw that he was his father’s son in his abandonment of a family who had always deserved better than him.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 170-171
Explanation and Analysis:

The things you forget. How it feels to hear someone speak to you with love.

“No, I just. I can’t stay here. I can’t do it. They've taken my passport so I have to but I can’t. I thought if I learned the rules… but I can’t. I can’t. I just want to come home.”

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha (speaker), Aneeka Pasha
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 – Aneeka Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Hira Shah
Page Number: 192
Explanation and Analysis:

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?

[…]

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?”

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 199-200
Explanation and Analysis:

Aneeka “Knickers” Pasha, the 19-year-old twin sister of Muslim fanatic Parvaiz “Pervy” Pasha has been revealed as her brother’s accomplice. She hunted down the Home Secretary's son, Eamonn, 24, and used sex to try and brainwash him into convincing his father to allow her terrorist brother back into England.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone
Related Symbols: Hijab
Page Number: 214
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 – Karamat Quotes

“Please don’t try to develop a spine. You weren’t built for it. Did she give you your first really great blow job, Eamonn? Is that what this is about? Because trust me, there are better ones out there.”

A pause, and then his son’s voice at its most cuttingly posh: “I think we’re done here, Father.”

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Karamat Lone (speaker), Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Terry Lone
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t return to the UK on her Pakistani passport without applying for a visa, which she was certainly welcome to do if she wanted to waste her time and money. As for her British passport, which had been confiscated by the security services when she tried to join her brother in Istanbul, it was neither lost nor stolen nor expired and therefore there were no grounds for her to apply for a new one. Let her continue to be British; but let her be British outside Britain.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 242-243
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 – Karamat Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:
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Parvaiz Pasha Quotes in Home Fire

The Home Fire quotes below are all either spoken by Parvaiz Pasha or refer to Parvaiz Pasha. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Islam, Nationality, and Identity. Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 – Isma Quotes

“Do you consider yourself British?” the man said.
“I am British.”
“But do you consider yourself British?”
“I’ve lived here all my life.” She meant there was no other country of which she could feel herself a part, but the words came out sounding evasive.

Related Characters: Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha
Related Symbols: Hijab
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

Parvaiz was the person Aneeka talked to about all her griefs and worries, but it was Isma she came to for an embrace, or a hand to rub her back, or a body to curl up against on the sofa. And when the burden of the universe seemed too great for Isma to bear—particularly in those early days after their grandmother and mother had died within the space of a year, leaving Isma to parent and provide for two grief-struck twelve-year-olds—it was Aneeka who would place her hands on her sister's shoulders and massage away the ache.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 – Isma Quotes

Yes, Dr. Shah, if you look at colonial laws you’ll see plenty of precedent for depriving people of their rights; the only difference is this time it’s applied to British citizens, and even that’s not as much of a change as you might think, because they’re rhetorically being made un-British […] The 7/7 terrorists were never described by the media as “British terrorists.” Even when the word “British” was used, it was always “British of Pakistani descent” or “British Muslim” or, my favorite, “British passport holders,” always something interposed between their Britishness and terrorism.

Related Characters: Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Hira Shah
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:

“Parvaiz is not our father. He’s my twin. He’s me. But you, you’re not our sister anymore.”

“Aneeka…”

“I mean it. You betrayed us, both of us. And then you tried to hide it from me. Don’t call, don’t text, don’t send me pictures, don’t fly across the ocean and expect me to ever agree to see your face again. We have no sister.”

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Isma Pasha (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:

“It’s harder for him,” he said. “Because of his background. Early on, in particular, he had to be more careful than any other MP, and at times that meant doing things he regretted. But everything he did, even the wrong choices, were because he had a sense of purpose. Public service, national good, British values […].”

There he sat, his father’s son. It didn’t matter if they were on this or that side of the political spectrum, or whether the fathers were absent or present, or if someone else had loved them better, loved them more: in the end they were always their fathers' sons.

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 – Eamonn Quotes

“That’s my twin. I’ve spent every day the last six months sick with worry about him. Now he wants to come home. But your father is unforgiving, particularly about people like him. So I’m not going to get my brother back. […] half of me is always there, wondering if he’s alive, what he’s doing, what he’s done. I'm so tired of it. I want to be here, completely. With you.”

It was what she’d say if she were still only trying to manipulate him. It was what she’d say if she’d really fallen in love with him.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:

Who is this posh English boy with my face, the father would say, sometimes with disappointment, sometimes with pride. Who you made me, so blame yourself the son would reply, and his father would respond with either There is no blame, my jaan, my life or That was your mother’s doing, not mine.

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Karamat Lone (speaker), Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 – Parvaiz Quotes

They’d returned most of the items they took, but not the pictures of Adil Pasha climbing a mountain, sitting beside a campfire, wading across a stream—sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of other men, always smiling, always with a gun slung over his shoulder or cradled in his lap. When you’re old enough, my son, his father had inscribed inside it, which made Parvaiz’s mother furious for reasons he didn't then understand.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq, Zainab Pasha
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:

Or Farooq would talk and Parvaiz would listen to those stories of his father for which he’d always yearned—not a footloose boy or feckless husband but a man of courage who fought injustice, saw beyond the lie of national boundaries, kept his comrades’ spirits up through times of darkness.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq, Zainab Pasha, Isma’s grandmother
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Adil Pasha, Farooq
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 – Parvaiz Quotes

He had survived military training, during which he learned that fear can drive your body to impossible feats, and that the men of his father’s generation who fought jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, all went home to their families for the winter months. That piece of information had made him blubber into his pillow at night, not because it made him understand that his father had never loved him (though he did understand that) but because he finally saw that he was his father’s son in his abandonment of a family who had always deserved better than him.

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 170-171
Explanation and Analysis:

The things you forget. How it feels to hear someone speak to you with love.

“No, I just. I can’t stay here. I can’t do it. They've taken my passport so I have to but I can’t. I thought if I learned the rules… but I can’t. I can’t. I just want to come home.”

Related Characters: Parvaiz Pasha (speaker), Aneeka Pasha
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 – Aneeka Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Hira Shah
Page Number: 192
Explanation and Analysis:

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?

[…]

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?”

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 199-200
Explanation and Analysis:

Aneeka “Knickers” Pasha, the 19-year-old twin sister of Muslim fanatic Parvaiz “Pervy” Pasha has been revealed as her brother’s accomplice. She hunted down the Home Secretary's son, Eamonn, 24, and used sex to try and brainwash him into convincing his father to allow her terrorist brother back into England.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone
Related Symbols: Hijab
Page Number: 214
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 – Karamat Quotes

“Please don’t try to develop a spine. You weren’t built for it. Did she give you your first really great blow job, Eamonn? Is that what this is about? Because trust me, there are better ones out there.”

A pause, and then his son’s voice at its most cuttingly posh: “I think we’re done here, Father.”

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Karamat Lone (speaker), Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Terry Lone
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:

She couldn’t return to the UK on her Pakistani passport without applying for a visa, which she was certainly welcome to do if she wanted to waste her time and money. As for her British passport, which had been confiscated by the security services when she tried to join her brother in Istanbul, it was neither lost nor stolen nor expired and therefore there were no grounds for her to apply for a new one. Let her continue to be British; but let her be British outside Britain.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Parvaiz Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 242-243
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 – Karamat Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha, Eamonn Lone, Parvaiz Pasha, Isma Pasha, Karamat Lone, Adil Pasha
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis: