83 pages • 2 hours read
Home Fire
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Eamonn returns to London, and instead of posting a gift from Isma to Aunty Naseem—a package of M&Ms—he delivers it himself. On his way to Preston Road, memories of this neighborhood return to him: Every Eid, his father would insist that they go to Eamonn’s great-uncle’s house located nearby. After seeing that his family showed no interest in observing this Muslim holiday, Eamonn’s father stopped forcing them to pay the visit and instead went alone. Thus, these visits only left Eamonn with feelings of estrangement, but after spending time with Isma, he wanted to see the neighborhood again and to rediscover “a piece of his childhood—of his father—that he’d been ready to forget” (76).
Aunty Naseem warmly welcomes Eamonn, and her traditionally decorated house “brought back his great-uncle’s home, and with it the shameful memory of his own embarrassment about it” (76). As she asks him questions about Isma and fries samosas for him, Aneeka comes downstairs; Eamonn recognizes her immediately from the picture he saw in Isma’s apartment. Although Aneeka realizes right away that their guest is Eamonn, her behavior towards him is hostile, and she refers to him as “Googling White Muslim” (81). When they soon part company, Aneeka strides away as if she never wants to see Eamonn again, but she comes up to him on the train, and invites herself to his apartment.
Although Eamonn is confused about Aneeka’s intentions, when they are alone in his apartment she takes off her hijab, and he interprets it as an invitation to intimacy. The two of them begin a romantic relationship and start seeing each other regularly, but only in Eamonn’s apartment because Aneeka insists that they remain “each other’s secret” (90). Eamonn initially finds this secrecy thrilling, but after finding himself unable to call her because she hasn’t even given him her phone number, he wants to distance himself from the relationship and leaves the city for a week without warning her. On the second night, Eamonn returns to London and finds Aneeka sleeping on the landing of his apartment; the couple reconciles, and Eamonn gives her the keys to his apartment.
As they spend more time together, Eamonn asks Aneeka about Isma, but she simply explains that her sister took away something that belonged to Aneeka, and that’s why they are on bad terms. As for Parvaiz, he appears in her stories as “her ever-present partner in crime” (93) who had “gone traveling, in the time-honored fashion of drifting British boys” (93). One night, Aneeka gets a Skype call and shuts herself in the bathroom to talk, without explaining anything to Eamonn, but he overhears her saying that she is “making sure of things here” (104). Aneeka’s refusal to explain what the call was about makes Eamonn question their relationship, but his love and devotion to her outweigh his doubts.
Chapter 4 Summary
The chapter opens with Eamonn watching a video of his father talking to students of a mostly Muslim school where Karamat—as well as two men who recently had been killed by American airstrikes in Syria—once studied. In his speech, the Home Secretary encourages students not to set themselves apart in their looks and their religion, but instead, to strive to integrate “in this multiethnic, multireligious, multitudinous United Kingdom” (106). Although the press praises Karamat’s speech for its progressiveness, Eamonn has mixed feelings about it because he is worried about Aneeka’s reaction to his words.
One day, Aneeka comes to Eamonn’s apartment and must take a shower immediately because someone spat at her on the train because she was wearing her hijab. Aneeka draws a parallel between Karamat’s stance that it is “okay to stigmatize people for the way they dress” (110) and what happened to her, but Eamonn tries to convince her that his father wants “people like [her]” (110) to suffer less from racist attacks. Aneeka is hurt by the fact that Eamonn, although unintentionally, divides everyone into people like him and people like her, and she admits that because of this she wanted to keep their relationship secret. Trying to assure Aneeka of his love and devotion, Eamonn makes a “proposed proposal” (112), letting her know that he is ready to ask for her hand.
One morning afterward, as both of them sit on the terrace pitting cherries, Aneeka tells Eamonn more about her childhood; she shares that her mother was always stressed out that they could be “driven out of [their] homes if any of [them] said the wrong thing to the wrong person” (113), all because Aneeka’s father was a jihadi. Hearing this, Eamon wants to make up for Aneeka’s hard childhood and offers to go on a trip together. The girl refuses because she is sure that the law enforcement bodies are watching her and will detain her as soon as she boards the plane. At first, Eamonn interprets this as “the Muslim paranoia” (118) he had seen in her before, so Aneeka confesses that her brother joined the ISIS media unit and is now in Raqqa, Syria.
Eamonn gets angry at her for not telling him this earlier and doesn’t want to hear her explanations that Parvaiz wants to come back to Britain. He suspects that Aneeka got on the train with him the day they met because she knew that the Home Secretary’s son could help her get her brother back to Britain safely. Eamonn initially tells Aneeka to get out, but then his rage subsides, and Aneeka shows him a picture of Parvaiz on her phone. Overwhelmed with the precariousness of his situation, Eamonn agrees to talk to his father about bringing Parvaiz home.
He arrives at his parents’ house early in the morning, surprising them both. During the talk with his father, Eamonn informs him right away that he wants to marry a Muslim girl of Pakistani origin who lives on Preston Road. Karamat looks “pleased to be surprised” (131) with the news and encourages Eamonn to bring her to dinner the following Sunday. When Eamonn mentions that there’s “a boy she was close to at school” (133) and who has gone to Syria, his father knows immediately that the boy is Parvaiz, because supposedly he knows all British young men who had decided to join ISIS. As Karamat describes “terrorism as family trade” for the Pashas, the conversation between the father and the son grows tense. Karamat refuses to help his son and forbids him from contacting Aneeka again.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
Although in the third chapter of the novel Isma is merely a background for Eamonn’s thoughts, the striking difference between them, especially in terms of their attitude to the state, becomes even more apparent. After hearing about Isma’s father, Eamonn “tried to imagine growing up knowing your father to be a fanatic, his death a mystery open to terrible speculation, but the attempt was defeated by his simple inability to know how such a man as Adil Pasha could have existed in Britain to begin with” (72). This reaction foregrounds his one-sided view of Britain and highlights how his distilled surrounding blinded him to the diversity of British society.
When Eamonn visits Aunty Naseem, the traditional Muslim lifestyle that he witnesses contrasts sharply with his secular upbringing. Although he supported his father who openly expressed his view that there’s “the need for British Muslims to lift themselves out of the Dark Ages if they wanted the rest of the nation to treat them with respect” (73), he is fascinated with Aunty Naseem’s piety and her bond with her roots. Their meeting foregrounds the juxtaposition between British people who have grown deeply rooted into their origin, religion, and customs, and those who have become secularized and alienated from that traditional lifestyle. For Aunty Naseem, her background serves as a foothold in a constantly changing world; for Eamonn, it is rather a source of discomfort, if not shame.
Aneeka, by contrast, as she appears in these chapters, embodies the ambivalence one may feel towards one’s roots. On the one hand, she is diligent in performing her daily prayers and in wearing her hijab. On the other hand, she is just as ready to shed her traditional upbringing, as becomes clear from her willingness to uncover her head in Eamonn’s home a few hours after they have met and to start a romantic relationship with him. Aneeka’s ambivalence also manifests itself later in these chapters, when her mood swings and her changing attitude towards Eamonn become more apparent. Unlike Isma, Aneeka is more impulsive and headstrong; she doesn’t deliberate the appearance of Eamonn in her life for a long time and instead seizes an opportunity to use him and his family connections to get her brother back to Britain. Although she is aware of the risks involved, Aneeka is bold enough to first make Eamonn fall in love with her, and then to tell him about her intentions.
Eamonn’s decision to talk openly with his father about Aneeka and Parvaiz demonstrates how eager he is to please her and to help her. Although the issue at stake is highly divisive and has a potential to make his family turn away from him, Eamonn takes the risk of souring his relationships with his father, whom he sees as an example, for the sake of not losing Aneeka. The fact that Karamat guesses immediately what Muslim family from Preston Road Eamonn is taking about foregrounds how strongly he feels about the issue of British Muslim men joining ISIS. His reaction to the news is harsh, which suggests that for him certain issues are more crucial than his son’s happiness.
Unlock all 83 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Kamila Shamsie
