Home Fire is a novel published by Kamila Shamsie in 2017. It is an example of a popular form of storytelling in which a modern-day context is created to retell a familiar pre-existing story. In this case, the modern-day tensions and conflict between radical Islamic extremism and Christian-dominated western democracies are introduced as the background upon which the tragedy of Antigone by Greek playwright Sophocles plays out.
While the bulk of critical attention toward Home Fire has focused—not without good reason—on the parallel it draws to the tragedy of Antigone, the real-life backstory behind the writing of the novel itself by Shamsie is also worthy of critical attention. That backstory presents an interesting case study of how the narrative focus of a novel’s fiction is directly tied to the real-life circumstances of the author who wrote it. Home Fire is very much a modern-day retelling of the ancient Greek tragedy about Antigone.
The protagonist of the novel, Aneeka Pasha, correlates to Antigone’s overwhelming grief stimulated by the death of her brother Polynices. As an example of how the novelist adapts the skeletal framework of the tragedy’s plot to suit her vision, however, Aneeka’s brother Parvaiz is not already dead at the beginning of the story. The thematic exploration of grief is thereby expanded upon to become an analysis of the emotional turmoil family members undergo as collateral damage that is part of the consequences of the political radicalization of another family member. Unlike Antigone, Aneeka need not wait for her brother’s literal death to initiate the mourning process since the brother she always knew metaphorically dies once he begins undergoing the process of transformation into a newly radicalized extremist intent upon serving as a soldier in the jihad.
Just as Sophocles does not limit the exploration of Antigone’s emotional reaction to her brother’s death by keeping the focus solidly contained within the family, the metaphorical death of the pre-radicalized Parvaiz is also situated within the broader context of the socio-political dynamics of the time. This broadening of the subject matter allows the story to become one not just limited to how radicalization impacts a family, but to become a portrait of the bigger picture of extreme overreaction by western nations to the relatively self-contained threat presented by Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. The Pasha family becomes a metaphor for this self-contained threat and the reaction by those external to the family represents the overreaction of many democratic governments.
Describing radical Islamic terrorism as relatively self-contained is not to suggest that the danger of the terrorists themselves was overplayed, but rather that the unified response by entire governments to what, statistically speaking, was not representative of even a fractional percent of the world population was an example of extremist politics as much as the terrorist themselves. This overreaction to the mostly self-contained threat of Islamic radicalism ultimately had the absurdly tragic consequence of transforming almost literally every Muslim in the world into suspects with the potential to explode a bomb at a moment’s notice anywhere in the world they could easily access.
This issue is explored fictionally in the text primarily through the character of Parvaiz. He becomes the all-encompassing symbolic figure of how the demonization of an entire religion in response to Al-Qaeda was instrumental in the process of radicalizing an entirely new and more dangerously devastating army of terrorists that came to be known as ISIS. The real-life socio-political context into which the author drops her reinvented characters from Antigone is one that transfers the burden of tragedy over to the shoulders of the title character’s brother. Parvaiz becomes a much more tragic figure than Polynices because the path he chooses leaves him metaphorically dead at the beginning of the novel rather than literally dead as in the play is one that dares to remove some of the blame for radicalization from Parvaiz himself. The result is an indictment of the entire political infrastructure in which every action produces a consequence that results in a reaction.
One of the most significant elements of the story is its presentation of how the process of radicalization works. And it is a process that is essentially the same whether the result is creating extremist Muslims propagandizing corrupted interpretations of Islamic religious texts or right-wing extremists propagandizing disproven conspiracy theories. ISIS became legendary for its high-quality marketing campaign conducted online seeking to radicalize the gullible and Home Fire honestly depicts this historical reality in the fictionalized radicalization of Parvaiz.
For those who will suggest that the real-life analogs of Parvaiz are entirely and solely to blame for making really bad decisions based on that gullibility, however, there is also the significance of the story behind the story. Propaganda alone was not responsible for radicalizing ordinary citizens personified by Parvaiz. Their subjugation to the effects of the propaganda specifically directed toward their biases and prejudices was heightened as a result of their intensified rejection of the propaganda campaign aimed specifically at intensifying biases and prejudices against them. That successful campaign to normalize extreme bias and prejudice toward all Muslims in response to the infinitesimal percentage that actually was terrorists had an effect in the real world which can effectively be described in reference to the novel as insisting that Aneeka be suspected as a potential terrorist simply because she had a brother who had been radicalized.
Ultimately, the state of the world became one that served to create the context against which Home Fire updates its story of Antigone. That state was one in which almost the only thing anyone who was a practicing Muslim had to do to bring men in suits hiding a badge and gun to their home was to conduct extensive online searches for certain hot button keywords. Anyone who daily was using their internet account to commit the act that came to be known as “Googling While Muslim” would almost inevitably receive a knock on their door one day.
The problem with “Googling While Muslim” is that the authorities conducting the spying operations required could not know simply from the search index whether a person daily looking at sites about joining ISIS, making pipe bombs, preparing for suicide bombings and such was actually considering doing those things or was simply an author conducting research so as to better write about people considering those things. And so, the backstory of the writing of Home Fire is that the author actually had to rely on non-Muslim friends and acquaintances she could trust not to report her to the authorities to conduct online research for her in order to complete the novel she was writing without bringing down up the concerted force of anti-Muslim government agents.
