Home Fire

And now it’s this orphaned student, who wants for her brother what she never had for her father: a grave beside which she can sit and weep for the awful, pitiable mess of her family life. Look at her, Karamat: look at this sad child you’ve raised to your enemy, and see how far you’ve lowered yourself in doing that.”

I’m not talking about Eamonn, you self-important idiot. I’m talking about a nineteen-year-old, rotting in the sun while his sister watches, out of her mind with grief. He’s dead already; can’t you leave him alone?”

Who is she?”

“Isma Pasha. The sister—”

“I know who that is. Bring her in.”

“In here, sir?”

Unbelievable that his son should have repeated that part of the conversation to his mother—did he know nothing about the rules between men?

How’s your son’s student visa application coming along?”

“Actually, he’s decided to go with Harvard rather than Oxford. The girl made some interesting points, don’t you think?”

Of course she said that once she thought I’d abandoned her.”

She’s had police protection stationed outside her house. I haven’t let the world see the kinds of videos her beloved brother worked on. She hasn’t been locked up in an interrogation room for fourteen days without charge, not even after admitting that she seduced my son in order to help a terrorist. You saw that transcript, didn’t you? She admitted it.”

I’ve done what you asked. I haven’t called or texted. You said if I agreed, you would help her. How have you helped her?”

That final word spoken with all the disgust of a child of migrants who understands how much his parents gave up—family, context, language, familiarity—because the nation to which they first belonged had proven itself inadequate to the task of allowing them to live with dignity.

he’d heard the girl’s one-line explanation for leaving England and hadn’t been able to stop himself from responding: “She’s going to look for justice in Pakistan?”