Home Fire

by

Kamila Shamsie

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Themes and Colors
Islam, Nationality, and Identity. Theme Icon
Familial Love, Protection, and Betrayal Theme Icon
Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance Theme Icon
Stereotypes vs. Individuality Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Home Fire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance Theme Icon

Home Fire includes two very different father-son relationships: the relationship between British politician Karamat Lone and his son, Eamonn, and the relationship between jihadi Adil Pasha and his son, Parvaiz. Eamonn and Parvaiz both walk in the shadows of their fathers’ legacies as they wonder how to carve their own paths in the world. Eamonn tries to live up to his father’s expectations of strength and determination despite the fact that he lives in a world of privilege that his father never had. Parvaiz, on the other hand, abandons the life that his sisters have created for him in order to follow in his father’s footsteps. Shamsie thus illustrates how a son’s sense of inheritance from his father can become an inescapable burden as the son tries to define his own individual life.

Parvaiz, who never knew his father, ends up trying to recreate his Adil’s life in order to better understand his own purpose. Parvaiz meets Farooq, a cousin of one of Parvaiz’s friends in the neighborhood. Farooq tells stories about Adil that Parvaiz has never known, because Adil was arrested in Afghanistan and then died of a seizure while being transported to Guantánamo. These are “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.” Parvaiz digests these stories readily, eager to see his father as a hero rather than a villain—someone he can then emulate. This eagerness demonstrates Parvaiz’s need to define himself through his father’s life.

Parvaiz’s desire to connect with his father grows when Farooq has several of his cousins chain Parvaiz to the floor in an unbearable crouch for hours and then waterboard him. At first Parvaiz is traumatized and upset, but then he thinks that he is becoming more and more like his father. Later, he asks to have the torture repeated, saying, “I want to feel my father’s pain.” This statement again reinforces the idea that Parvaiz feels the burden of his father’s absence and that he wants to experience the same things in order to define himself. Parvaiz finally goes to Raqqa, Syria to try and meet other men who might have known his father and to aid in the effort for which his father fought: Islamic supremacy. Yet it is during this time that Parvaiz recognizes the folly of his actions in trying to  become like his father. He learns that the men of his father’s generation who fought jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, or Kashmir all went home to their families in the winter. This information makes Parvaiz “blubber into his pillow at night, not because it makes him understand that his father never loved him (though he does understand that), but because he finally sees that he’s becoming his father in negative ways rather than positive ones. Too late, Parvaiz recognizes the harm in defining himself through a man who abandoned him: by running away from his sisters, Parvaiz is repeating the same betrayal.

Eamonn, too, feels the burden of his father’s legacy on his shoulders, particularly because Karamat doesn’t believe that Eamonn can live up to it. This causes Eamonn to try instead to prove that he can be his own person and step outside of his father’s shadow—an action which ultimately causes his own downfall. Initially, Eamonn conveys the love and admiration he has for his father to Isma, saying that fathers are “guides into manhood” for sons. He describes the relationship further: “We want to be like them, we want to be better than them. We want to be the only people in the world who are allowed to be better than them." Eamonn thus illustrates his own deep-seated need to live up to his father’s legacy—and to outshine it. Yet Eamonn also sees how his identity is complicated by his father’s perception of him. Growing up, Karamat would say to Eamonn, “Who is this posh English boy with my face, […] 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.” Eamonn thus understands that he has a privilege his father did not have; he has grown up in comfort in Britain, cushioned by his mother’s family’s wealth, so he’ll never really be able to work as hard as Karamat did. Therefore, it is impossible to walk completely in Karamat’s footsteps or gain the resilience that he had. After Parvaiz dies and Karamat refuses to allow Aneeka to bring her brother’s body home to Britain, Eamonn is determined to defy Karamat in order to stand up for himself. He posts a video message online, imploring his father to see reason, and then he travels to Pakistan in order to (as Karamat puts it) “prove to his father he [has] a spine.” His actions are intended to support Aneeka, but perhaps more importantly, they’re intended to defy Karamat, highlighting again how the weight of a father’s legacy can drive a son to extreme measures.

Through Parvaiz and Eamonn, Shamsie illustrates how the legacy of a father to a son becomes inescapable. It is Isma who connects the two characters when she hears Eamonn defend his father’s actions early in the book: “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.” Ultimately, for both men, the attempts to escape their father’s shadows results in their own deaths—deaths borne of their fathers’ actions. Parvaiz is killed while trying to escape the organization that his father fought for; Eammon killed in retribution for his father’s discriminatory policies. These endings argue that the cycle of sons measuring themselves against their fathers can lead to fatal consequences.

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Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance appears in each chapter of Home Fire. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance Quotes in Home Fire

Below you will find the important quotes in Home Fire related to the theme of Fathers, Sons, and Inheritance.
Chapter 2 – Isma Quotes

“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 3 – Eamonn Quotes

“Especially not him. He says you are what you make of yourself.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “Unless you’re his son. Then he indulges you even if you don’t make anything of yourself.”
“He indulges you?”
“Yes. My sister’s like him, so she gets all the expectation. I get the pampering and the free passes.”
“Do you mind that?”
“I mind a lot. And you’re the first person to ever guess that might be the case.”

Related Characters: Aneeka Pasha (speaker), Eamonn Lone (speaker), Karamat Lone, Emily Lone
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 – Eamonn Quotes

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 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:
Chapter 9 – Karamat Quotes

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. […] Where is the crime in this? Dad, please tell me, where is the crime?

Related Characters: Eamonn Lone (speaker), Aneeka Pasha, Karamat Lone
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:

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: