By Kamila Shamsie
A family torn apart by radicalisation
Subject
Themes
Three siblings grow up in the shadow of a father they never really knew. Adil Pasha abandoned his family to fight in foreign wars, was detained at Bagram, and died on a transport flight to Guantanamo. The British government never acknowledged his death; the family learned of it two years later from a released prisoner. In the aftermath, the eldest sibling, Isma, sacrificed her academic career to raise the twelve-year-old twins, Aneeka and Parvaiz, shielding them from the stigma of their father's choices while their mother's health collapsed under the weight of secrecy and stress.
Three siblings grow up in the shadow of a father they never really knew. Adil Pasha abandoned his family to fight in foreign wars, was detained at Bagram, and died on a transport flight to Guantanamo. The British government never acknowledged his death; the family learned of it two years later from…
Published in 2017, the narrative is a contemporary retelling of Sophocles' Antigone, transposed from ancient Thebes to modern Britain and Pakistan. The structural parallel is precise: Antigone defies King Creon's edict forbidding the burial of her brother Polynices; Aneeka defies Home Secretary…
Adil Pasha is dead long before the story begins, but his choices continue to shape every member of his family. His eldest daughter manages a dry-cleaning shop for seven years because his absence forced her to become parent and provider. His youngest daughter constructs elaborate social defences to…
Citizenship is not simply a legal status; it is a tool of power, and those who control it can determine who belongs and who is cast out. Karamat Lone's career has been built on the strategic management of this tool. His proposal to expand the home secretary's power to revoke citizenship from…
Every significant relationship in the narrative is shaped by a love that simultaneously sustains and destroys. Aneeka's love for Parvaiz drives her to seduce the home secretary's son, endure months of secrecy and deception, fly to Karachi with her brother's body, and ultimately run toward a man…
The relationship between fathers and sons is the hidden engine of the narrative. Every major plot event can be traced back to a son's attempt to understand, emulate, reject, or redeem his father. Parvaiz travels to Syria because Farooq offers him a version of Adil Pasha he can admire. Eamonn defies…
Every character in the narrative is performing a version of belonging, and every performance is in some way false. Isma rehearses her answers to security questions with Aneeka, practising a persona of cooperative Britishness that will satisfy officers who have already decided she does not belong.…
Isma Pasha is the eldest of three siblings, and the one who carries the family's survival on her shoulders from the age of twenty-one. When her mother dies, leaving twelve-year-old twins Aneeka and Parvaiz orphaned, Isma abandons her promising academic career at the London School of Economics to…
Aneeka Pasha is nineteen years old, a law student at LSE on a full scholarship, and the twin sister of Parvaiz. She is beautiful in a way that commands attention: sharp-featured, dark-haired, capable of transforming a black bonnet cap and white tunic into something approaching armour. But her beauty…
Parvaiz Pasha is nineteen, the male twin, the one who inherited his mother's fine bones without Aneeka's fierceness. Where his sisters carry their father's legacy with anger or pragmatic silence, Parvaiz carries it as an open wound. He is the boy who never knew Adil Pasha but cannot stop searching…
Eamonn Lone is the home secretary's son, and he has spent his entire life being exactly that. He is handsome, well-mannered, privately educated, generous with his time and his laughter, and entirely without ambition. His father calls him "well intentioned," a phrase that sounds like praise until it…
Karamat Lone is the Home Secretary, a self-made man from Bradford whose ascent from a cramped flat above a seamstress's workshop to the highest office of security in Britain is the engine that drives his every calculation. He married Terry O'Flynn, an Irish-American interior designer he met at a…
Farooq is the recruiter, the man who appears in the Preston Road neighbourhood with broad shoulders, a muscular frame, and stories designed to transform a grieving boy into a willing soldier. He is not a native of Wembley; he arrives from elsewhere, sent by a network that has identified Parvaiz…
Isma Pasha arrives at Heathrow Airport three hours before her flight to America, expecting an interrogation. She is not disappointed. Security officers escort her to a room where a woman examines every item in her suitcase, running fabric between her fingers as though assessing its worth rather than…
Isma and Eamonn settle into a morning routine at the cafe. He arrives with local news highlights; she sends him a steaming-mug emoji to summon fresh coffees. Over lunch one day, he breaks into a Pakistani pop song his cousins used to sing, and Isma finds the melody on her phone. He introduces the…
Eamonn walks along the canal from Little Venice to Wembley, the M&Ms package tucked under his arm. It is April, and London is bursting into spring. The walk stirs memories of childhood Eid visits to his father's extended family, gatherings where he sat pressed against his mother in an alliance of…
Karamat Lone delivers a speech at a Muslim school in Bradford urging students not to "set yourself apart in the way you dress, the way you think, the outdated codes of behaviour you cling to." The hashtag #YouAreWeAreBritish trends alongside speculation about a future prime minister. Eamonn watches…
Parvaiz Pasha stands in an electronics shop in Istanbul, running his hands over professional-grade microphones and recording equipment with something close to reverence. Beside him is Farooq, a muscular, intimidating older man who leans against the counter while the shopkeeper rushes to serve them.…
Parvaiz's chance comes when Abu Raees sends him to Istanbul with Farooq to buy studio equipment. At the electronics shop, Parvaiz pays for everything with a thick wad of Turkish liras, asks the shopkeeper for a cheap phone with a SIM card for international calls, then requests the back exit. Once…
A man from the Pakistan High Commission sits in Aunty Naseem's living room with a plastic comb sticking out of his breast pocket. Aneeka refuses to accept what he has come to say. She tells him they have the wrong person, that her brother is a British citizen and has nothing to do with him. She…
Karamat Lone stands by the Thames at dawn, sleepless, pouring coffee from a thermos into a paper cup and contemplating the Palace of Westminster. He is thinking about his intention to expand the home secretary's power to revoke citizenship from British-born single-passport holders, a move he sees as…
Karamat wakes in the middle of the night to a terrible loneliness. He climbs the stairs and fits himself against Terry in bed, hiking up her nightdress to rest his hand on her thigh. She relents, pressing her foot against his. He whispers, "Let me stay, jaan," and for a few moments they are simply…
Isma Pasha is the eldest of three siblings, and the one who carries the family's survival on her shoulders from the age of twenty-one. When her mother dies, leaving twelve-year-old twins Aneeka and Parvaiz orphaned, Isma abandons her promising academic career at the London School of Economics to…
Aneeka Pasha is nineteen years old, a law student at LSE on a full scholarship, and the twin sister of Parvaiz. She is beautiful in a way that commands attention: sharp-featured, dark-haired, capable of transforming a black bonnet cap and white tunic into something approaching armour. But her beauty…
Parvaiz Pasha is nineteen, the male twin, the one who inherited his mother's fine bones without Aneeka's fierceness. Where his sisters carry their father's legacy with anger or pragmatic silence, Parvaiz carries it as an open wound. He is the boy who never knew Adil Pasha but cannot stop searching…
Eamonn Lone is the home secretary's son, and he has spent his entire life being exactly that. He is handsome, well-mannered, privately educated, generous with his time and his laughter, and entirely without ambition. His father calls him "well intentioned," a phrase that sounds like praise until it…
Karamat Lone is the Home Secretary, a self-made man from Bradford whose ascent from a cramped flat above a seamstress's workshop to the highest office of security in Britain is the engine that drives his every calculation. He married Terry O'Flynn, an Irish-American interior designer he met at a…
Farooq is the recruiter, the man who appears in the Preston Road neighbourhood with broad shoulders, a muscular frame, and stories designed to transform a grieving boy into a willing soldier. He is not a native of Wembley; he arrives from elsewhere, sent by a network that has identified Parvaiz…
Three siblings grow up in the shadow of a father they never really knew. Adil Pasha abandoned his family to fight in foreign wars, was detained at Bagram, and died on a transport flight to Guantanamo. The British government never acknowledged his death; the family learned of it two years later from a released prisoner. In the aftermath, the eldest sibling, Isma, sacrificed her academic career to raise the twelve-year-old twins, Aneeka and Parvaiz, shielding them from the stigma of their father's choices while their mother's health collapsed under the weight of secrecy and stress.