The International Journal of
Literary Humanities
__________________________________________________________________________
Rethinking Home and Identity of
Muslim Diaspora in Shamsie’s
Home Fire and Hamid’s Exit West
PADEL MUHAMAD RALLIE RIVALDY, MANNEKE BUDIMAN, AND SHURI MARIASIH GIETTY TAMBUNAN
THEHUMANITIES.COM
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VOLUME 18 ISSUE 1
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Asunción López-Varela, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
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Rethinking Home and Identity of
Muslim Diaspora in Shamsie’s
Home Fire and Hamid’s Exit West
Padel Muhamad Rallie Rivaldy,1 Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Manneke Budiman, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Abstract: Since 9/11, along with the rise and the collapse of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), identity proposition and
the meaning of home toward global Muslim societies have become prominent issue among scholars. The complexities of
these issues are represented in political and cultural realm as well as literary works of people from South Asian descent.
Drawing upon Hall’s theory of identity (1990), Brah’s “Homing Desire” (1996), and Bhabha’s “Unhomely” (1992, 1994),
this close-textual analysis investigates how Pakistani Muslim diasporic communities construct their identities and the
meaning of home within two novels: “Home Fire” and “Exit West.” The discussions in this article show that both novels
represent heterogeneity within home and identity construction of the Muslim diaspora. Through these representations, both
novels problematize the notion of radicalism, blur the East/West binary, underscore knowledge on multifariousness within
Islamic world, and offer inclusive transcultural contact zone as the concept of nation.
Introduction
T
wo decades after September 11, with the rise of “War on Terror” and the collapse of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), identity proposition toward global Muslim societies
has remained one of the most prominent issues among scholars. In the context of post-9/11
America, particularly after the election of Donald Trump as the US President in 2016 with his antiimmigrant policies, hostility and prejudices toward migrants and people of the border are
maintained due to the right-wing’s reasonable justification.2 Referring to the surveys by Ghosh
(2018), the same atmosphere is also present in several European countries as seen in post-Brexit
Britain, Greece, and Italy. On the other hand, several Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia
and Malaysia are now confused about how to respond to Islamic State (ex-) sympathizers in their
countries who are now taking shelter in Kurdish refugee camps. Based on the mentioned facts,
which are vital in the making of this study, there needs to be explanations on complexities within
political and cultural dynamics of Muslim societies. In the following discussion, we explore how
identity and the meaning of home for Muslim communities are constructed within two novels:
Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017) and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017).
As mentioned by Chambers (2011a), recent literary works in English that portray current
issues such as radicalism and geopolitical relations between Western and Eastern countries from
a Muslim’s point of view and gain massive attentions from the public and literary critics are
written by people from South Asian descent. Frank and Malreddy mention this phenomenon as
“global responses to the War on Terror” (2018, 93). Bilal (2016) points out that besides massive
attention, South Asian writers’ political commitment, which corresponds to the politicization of
1
Corresponding Author: Padel Muhamad Rallie Rivaldy, Department of Literature, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West
Java, 16424, Indonesia. email: padel.muhamad@ui.ac.id
2
According to Esposito and Finley (2019), one anti-immigrant rhetoric is articulated in Trump’s talk on June 16, 2016
which discussed the previous government’s stuttering in determining policies on migrant groups, especially Muslims and
people of Mexico.
The International Journal of Literary Humanities
Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020, https://thehumanities.com
© Common Ground Research Networks, Padel Muhamad Rallie Rivaldy,
Manneke Budiman, Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan, All Rights Reserved.
Permissions: cgscholar.com/cg_support
ISSN: 2327-7912 (Print), ISSN: 2327-8676 (Online)
https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-7912/CGP/v18i01/27-38 (Article)
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Keywords: Diaspora, Home, Identity, Muslim, Anglophone Literature
War on Terrorism’s rhetoric, is inevitable. For instance, such political commitment is mentioned
in an interview with Kamila Shamsie, as compiled by Chambers (2011b, 216): “I started writing
for newspapers just after 9/11…I dislike people making generalizations about the ‘Islamic
world,’ so I wrote about what I know: Pakistan.” However, instead of focusing on aspects
beyond a literary work, we ground our discussion on textual analysis (close-reading) to provide
in-depth observation on how Muslim narratives written by British-Pakistani novelists offer
alternatives of looking at Muslims and Islam.
To avoid generalization on Islam and Muslims, we follow Malak’s theorization in differing
three terms: Islamic, Muslim, and Muslim Narratives. According to Malak, the word “Islamic”
refers to a type of faith which “denotes thoughts, rituals, activities, and institutions specifically
proclaimed and sanctioned by Islam,” and is associated with a theological tradition (2005, 5). A
Muslim is a person “who espouses the religion of Islam or is shaped by its cultural impact”
regardless of whether he or she is an agnostic, an atheist, or a believer (2005, 5). Next, Muslim
Narratives are forms of archive or medium that are written by a person “who is rooted formatively
and emotionally in the culture and civilization of Islam” (2005, 7). The distinction between these
three terms are fundamental in this study to position both novelists as writers of Muslim heritage.
Settled in contemporary London, Shamsie’s Home Fire narrates three main orphaned
Muslim protagonists; Isma, Aneeka, and Parvaiz. One interesting part of Shamsie’s novel is the
elaboration of the story through an epistolary narrative style, which includes online media news,
WhatsApp chats, and Twitter statuses. The main conflict in the novel centers on Parvaiz,
Aneeka’s twin brother, who sets his routes to Raqqa to join Daesh. This situation sets the
confrontation between two sisters. Isma decides to report Parvaiz’s departure to the police, while
Aneeka secretly plans her brother’s return by exploiting Eamonn’s status as the Home
Secretary’s son. On the other hand, Hamid’s Exit West narrates the refugee crises through the
love story between Saeed and Nadia. In his latest work, Hamid elaborates Rushdie’s aesthetic of
magical realism by portraying refugee waves through magical doors.
Recent studies on Home Fire have focused on the issue of dissonance occurring in male
characters in the novel (Chambers 2018) and ideological representation (Shaheen, Qamar, and
Islam 2018), while previous studies on Exit West (2017) have explored concepts of mobility and
immobility within the migrant experience (Lagji 2018) and representations of political populism
(Huq 2018). In the same context, previous studies on post-9/11 Muslim diaspora have taken the
multidimensionality of Muslims’ political views into account and problematized historical
contextualization in viewing global disparities (Jones and Smith 2010; Morey 2011; Azeem
2016; Morrison 2017; and Sadaf 2018). Despite having explored the aforementioned issues, these
recent studies on the issue of identity and the meaning of home for Muslim diaspora have not
considered spatial issues and complexities of religious discourses (Landis 2016; Shirazi 2018;
and Kanwal 2015). For further discussions, we underscore the role of space in the process of
identity and the construction of the meaning of home for Muslim diaspora who are settled in
Western countries after 9/11. In addition, we also consider the position of Muslim women and
the interrelation between discourses of religion, ethnicities, and citizenship. By doing so, this
study contributes to the formation of alternative narratives of Islam and Muslims which challenge
the dominant discourses of stereotypes emerging in partially Islamophobic Western societies.
As researchers, our standing position is not to justify (in terms of humanizing) Muslim
subjects who joined radical groups or are involved in blind partisanship based on beliefs. The
phenomenon of humanizing radicalism or act of terrorism itself has been chronologically
maintained in literary works for a long time (Martin 2007), and an example of this would be
Doris Lessing’s work, The Good Terrorist (1985). In a review on Netenyahu’s book, Said (1987)
describes the discourse of essentialization of “terrorist” label on Arabs and Muslims and how the
discourse is encouraged by its author. Therefore, examining issues of radicalism and discourses
of Islamophobia within Muslim diaspora can challenge (rather than justify) the essentialization of
such “terrorist” label on specific group. Moreover, as Spivak argues, the ethics of listening to
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RIVALDY ET AL.: RETHINKING HOME AND IDENTITY OF MUSLIM DIASPORA
“the other as if it were a self, neither to punish nor to acquit” are significant in acquiring
understanding of “the other” (2004, 83).
This section explains how both Shamsie and Hamid’s texts adopt Hall’s (1990) view of identity
as protean and fluid by complicating Muslims affiliations rather than framing them as monolithic
and rigid believers. On the one hand, both novels affiliate their Muslim women protagonists with
liberal/secular/atheist affiliation. On the other hand, both novels also establish popular
stereotypes on their Muslim male protagonists with radical/conservative affiliations to further
problematize the notion of radicalism and Islamophobia discourse. Furthermore, this section also
explains how both novels promote Western and Islamic cultural repositories by problematizing
their intertextual affiliations to both legacies.
Inspired by Sophocles’ Antigone, Shamsie narrates a modern phenomenon of radicalism
through the stories of second-generation migrants, particularly those of Pasha’s family. In the
first part, Shamsie writes a detailed narrative of how the character Isma is interrogated in
Heathrow Airport due to her hijab and her surname (Pasha). In this scene, the proposition of
Isma’s surname is relevant because of its association with Pasha’s family head, Adil Pasha, who
was rumored to be joining Daesh to become a jihadist. From this public surveillance, the
portrayals of Islamophobic attitude are shifted onto Parvaiz, who is interrogated by the police
because of his involvement in defending the public library from closure, and Aneeka’s fear of
surveillance: “MI5. They listen in to my phone” (Shamsie 2017, 94). Through the shift of
restricted control as mentioned above, Shamsie informs her readers how public concern and strict
supervision on Muslims are the main factors which contribute to the whole conflict of the novel.
Nevertheless, Shamsie avoids providing an antagonistic narrative while criticizing the idea of
British purity through describing London as a hybrid cultural space that is constructed by crosscultural communities, which can be seen in depictions such as “a Jewish bakery beside an
Islamic bookshop beside a Romanian butcher” (Shamsie 2017, 61). Next, the appearance of
Terry Lone, an Irish-American architect can be understood as a symbol of Western people who
wish to learn more about people outside their roots and heritage. The narrative is evident in her
marriage to Karamat, who is also of Pakistani descent. In providing such narrative, Shamsie
maintains an optimistic tone in representing Western societies.
In order to provide alternative views on Muslim women, Shamsie criticizes the stereotype of
Muslims as a group unable to adapt with modernities (Said 1978) by juxtaposing traditional and
modern attributes, as portrayed within Isma’s appearance and Aneeka’s motive in using veil. In
the case of Isma, although she wears turban in her daily lives, she prefers the modern hairstyle
“beachy waves” (Shamsie 2017, 45). On the other hand, Aneeka wears a veil for political
purposes: “I get to choose which parts of me I want strangers to look at” (Shamsie 2017, 72).
Through this hijab/veil representation, Shamsie challenges the prejudice toward veil as a symbol
of oppression in Islam. In addition, both protagonists’ hybrid identities as Muslim diaspora are
also portrayed through their daily language preference. Although they fluently use English in
public and private space, some of them maintain Urdu language to express their inner experience,
and this is identifiable in Isma’s expression to Eamonn: “bay-takalufi” (Shamsie 2017, 29), to
state informal intimacy.
To a certain degree, Isma presents her hybridity on a performative level through creating an
impression for people that she is a Muslim who is completely integrated with the host society, as
appears at the beginning part of the novel. Before the interrogation happened, Isma had formerly
practiced a simulation with her sister, then finally decided to bring “no Quran, no family pictures,
no books on her areas of academic interest” (Shamsie 2017, 3). Several mentioned attributes in
Shamsie’s novel imply purposes; Isma does not bring Quran or her academic books so that she can
be regarded as a Muslim who promote rationality and avoiding her image as a communist comrade
as she is a fan of Karl Marx (Shamsie 2017). It is interesting to note Isma’s statement when she
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Redefining Muslim Identities
gives her opinion on Shia and Sunni during the interrogation: “as a Brit, I don’t distinguish between
one Muslim and another” (Shamsie 2017, 5). The use of phrase “Brit” indicates that Isma adopts a
Western point of view in valuing Islam, and this implies her liberal affiliation and ironically
legitimate generalization upon the Muslim world. Nevertheless, as Hall (1990) explains, when a
person positions him/herself, at the same time he/she is being positioned by the other. Indeed, the
interrogator positions Isma as a Muslim suspect and puts prejudice on her by accusing her of
stealing the jacket. This scene confirms Khan’s argument that Muslims are positioned as “snakes in
the grass” (2015, 36). In this sense, Isma’s acts can be viewed as the case of coping strategies rather
than identity conversion. This portrayal of performative integration strategy encourages critique
toward ability of Muslim profiling to filter harmful individuals from the harmless and its practice
always rooted in prejudice which leads to unfair discrimination.
Moreover, Shamsie also encourages Said’s theory that “Islam defines a relatively small
proportion of what actually takes place in the Islamic world” and how Islam is associated with
violence as well as its conception of jihad (1997, xiv). She creates a new image of Muslim
women by positioning Aneeka as a secular Pakistani descent who wore veil, studied law, was
sexually active, while believing in God at the same time. Through this strategy, Shamsie invites
her readers to underscore the concept of freedom within Islam and destabilize the Western
transactional point of view. This is more visible in a scene when Aneeka was asked by Eamonn
about her prayers, in which she replies: “Prayer isn’t about transaction, Mr. Capitalist. It’s about
starting the day right” (Shamsie 2017, 70).
Conversely, Shamsie maintains an established stereotype in representing her male character
to psychologically problematize the simplification of radicalism as unreasonable and deathdriven violence (Sageman 2004). In contrast to his sisters, Parvaiz is more inferior and unable to
fulfill his actualizations in economic or academic interests. Consequently, he suffers from crises
in defining himself: “‘Who am I?’ Parvaiz wanted to ask, but he knew the answer already. He
was Aneeka’s brother” (Shamsie 2017, 124). Linguistic possession of “Aneeka’s brother”
stresses a point on Parvaiz’s consciousness of his inability of becoming a person. Chambers
(2018) argues that fascinations on videogames and sound project motivate Parvaiz’s obsession to
have a listener. In our view, Parvaiz is an epitome of the introverted sensing type (Jung 1923,
500), who relies upon his senses in interpreting and acting on stimuli. Aside from playing
videogames, he imagines himself on a mission, in which the main reward is the authenticity of
identity, and this motivates him to accumulate clues to finish his quest. Nevertheless, he has
experienced alienation twice. At first, alienation occurs because of the closure of public library in
London “to which his mother had taken him and Aneeka after school at least once a week”
(Shamsie 2017, 143), which exemplifies his memory of his mother. Secondly, Parvaiz is
alienated from his ancestor’s homeland because of its association to a memory of derogative
speech act, or in Brah’s (1996, 11) term, “inferioris[ing] collective subject,” from his cousin in
Pakistan: “I’m a Pakistani and you’re a Paki” (Shamsie 2017, 150). Shamsie also problematizes
gender stereotypes by providing Parvaiz’s comment: “Muslim women, particularly the beautiful
ones need to be saved from Muslim men” (Shamsie 2017, 132) which has intertextual allusion
with Spivak’s “white men are saving brown women from brown men” (1994, 92). In this sense,
Shamsie encourages Spivak’s sarcastic remark and criticizes gendered stereotypes of South
Asian Muslim men and women.
Nevertheless, Parvaiz fails to completely read metaphors of London as represented through
domestic space of Aunty Naseem’s house. Shamsie represents Naseem’s house as a hybrid
diasporic space that allows its settlers to define how to become a Pakistani Muslim diaspora.
Aesthetically, Naseem’s architecture combines traditional Pakistani visual and olfactory
architectonic imageries such as “Arabic calligraphy,” “carpeted stairs,” and “scent of spices”
(Shamsie 2017, 61), and Britishness gustatory imagery of “Tea—with sugar?” (2017, 61).
Instead of interpreting this space, Parvaiz prefers to reveal the mystery of his unknown father’s
jihad legacy, which he finds from the figure of Farooq. In this sense, Parvaiz’s decisions to take
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his route to Raqqa is motivated by not only the Global-Ummah solidarity as a consequence of
global-local interlinking (Hamid 2011), but also his surface reading on Raqqa city as a symbolic
representation of his father and an Islamic homeland that provides an alternative to answer the
question of his existential experience and being. As mentioned by Bhabha, “To ‘un’-speak is
both to release from erasure and repression, and to reconstruct, reinscribe the elements of the
known” (1992, 146). At the time when he un-speaks the statement about his father to Aneeka
because she is “just a girl” (Shamsie 2017, 142), Parvaiz allows himself to reconstruct the
meaning of his unknown father. Shamsie eludes Parvaiz’s “unlinking” (Shamsie 2017, 140) to
Elton John’s “Yellow Brick Road,” a road towards fame and glory. In accordance with her
responses to the fact that Parvaiz has left, Isma reports the case to the police while Aneeka
maintains an out-of-mind mission on ensuring Parvaiz’s return. At this point, Shamsie promotes
Islamic cultural repositories by eluding the madness story between Aneeka and Parvaiz to
Persian poet’s legend “Layla-Majnu” (Shamsie 2017, 227).
In accordance with the notion of radicalism, Shamsie also criticizes and provides selfcriticism of the Muslim diasporic community by highlighting the proposition of metaphor and
literary language within Quranic interpretation. Her critique manifested in a scene when Farooq
offended by Parvaiz's intertextual jokes that underestimate the glorification of Islamic State as
follows: “Let’s follow the Yellow Brick Road, or is it the White Rabbit who takes us there?”
(Shamsie 2017, 145). Shamsie notes that the radical group’s simplification on literary language is
consequently influenced by their interpretation of the holy book. In the previous quotation,
Parvaiz’s spoof intertexts Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland. The “Yellow Brick Road” means a
road to imaginary wonderlands, while the “White Rabbit” represents magical realms. However,
Farooq fails to receive the spoof, and this can be identified in his reply: “What are you talking
about rabbits for when I’m trying to tell you something serious?” (Shamsie 2017, 145). In
addition, Shamsie also complicates the portrayal of radical groups through Farooq’s appearance.
Besides his phallocentric point of view when judging such form of “emasculated version of
Islam” (Shamsie 2017, 131), he was a caring, masculine, fashioned urban man who follows the
growth of popular culture (Shamsie 2017).
To sum up, Shamsie presents alternatives in viewing Muslims and simplification of
radicalism. As explained above, she writes stories about Muslim women with varied affiliations
to criticize eurocentrically biased point of view as well as gender dimension of Muslim
stereotypes. Even though she re-articulates established stereotypes in constructing her Muslim
male protagonist, we interpret her intention as a narrative strategy to problematize the notion of
radicalism and the discourse of Islamophobia.
On the other hand, Hamid’s novel is an allegorical depiction of refugee crises. Hamid provides
his readers with defamiliarization since his protagonists’ former country is not named and is
“mostly at peace” (Hamid 2017, 1). The novel begins with the first encounter between Saeed and
Nadia before guiding both protagonists into a more intimate relationship. However, Hamid informs
the readers that the protagonists’ city was at conflict since its romantic and elegant visualization are
narrated through past tenses (Hamid 2017). At first, Saeed is a middle-class nonreligious Muslim
described as “independent-minded, grown man, unmarried, with a decent post and a good
education” (Hamid 2017, 8). Curious about Nadia’s black robe, Saeed awkwardly asks why she
chooses that kind of fashion. Similar to Shamsie’s new image of Muslim woman, Hamid also
underscores Nadia as an atheist Muslim woman, who continuously asks “irreverence in matters of
faith” (Hamid 2017, 17) and uses the robe for political purposes: “so men don’t fuck with me”
(Hamid 2017, 16). At this point, Hamid problematizes the correlation between attribute and
identity. At a certain degree, the robe becomes a cultural signifier which represents a Muslim’s
level of religiosity, but for Nadia, the use of the robe means positioning herself to bargain with the
patriarchal society and its high number of sexual violence, particularly in her former country, as
portrayed in a scene when Nadia rode a motorcycle, and someone shouted at her: “only a whore
would drive a motorcycle” (Hamid 2017, 39).
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RIVALDY ET AL.: RETHINKING HOME AND IDENTITY OF MUSLIM DIASPORA
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERARY HUMANITIES
The heat in Saeed and Nadia’s city raised along with not only the spread of a conservative
militant group which starts banning music listening, but also the intense gripping visualizations
of “flying robots” propagation and the use of human heads for football playing (Hamid 2017,
79). In this unhomely moment, both protagonists sometimes project their vision into escapism,
such as their consumption of “joints” and “shrooms” (Hamid 2017, 28). In our opinion, this act
of using drugs can be interpreted as their anti-violence resistance towards conservative militant
groups, similar to the hippie movement in the 1960s US. However, after the shooting of Saeed’s
mother, both protagonists decide to go away from their country by passing a magical door in the
dentist office, while Saeed’s father was determined to stay in his home. Instead of fantastic and
magical, Hamid depicts both protagonists’ journey as a dystopia, as mentioned in the quotation:
This narrative is an allegorical representation of a refugee’s journey, as their first departure
starts from a clinical checkup. Here, Hamid garners his readers’ sympathy to imagine contradictory
feelings experienced by refugees through the use of opposite syllables, such as “dying/being born”
and “extinguishing/bruised.” The explanation above also highlights the differences between Saeed’s
reception on their current condition and that of Nadia. Nadia personifies her leaving as
“extinguishing” the past, which means that she completely accepts her decision. On the other hand,
as Hamid continues: “she [Nadia] saw Saeed pivot back to the door, as though he wished maybe to
reverse course and return through it” (Hamid 2017, 99); Saeed’s doubt implies his uneasiness to go
away from home. Although Hamid imagines a dystopian vision in both protagonists’ experience, at
the same time he encourages migration as a method of learning, which is allegorically explained
through the story of an old maid woman in Marrakesh. Due to her age and belief of her inferiority,
she exemplifies herself as a “small plant in a small patch of soil held between the rocks of a dry and
windy place” (Hamid 2017, 225). Hamid alludes to Ghazalian allegorical method of learning:
between the stream of a river and a murky pound. In this sense, he provides his readers an
optimistic vision in viewing migration.
Besides a magical realism, another interesting part of Hamid’s novel is the use of vignette,
which repeatedly appears within the story. Vignette itself is not commonly used because it leaves
plot holes in the whole story (Cuddon 2013, 762). However, this narrative style allows Hamid to
provide his ideas on migration and intertextual allusions. Vignette firstly appears in the story of a
sleeping pale-skinned woman in Sydney who is secretly visited by a mysterious man that appears
on her closet’s door. However, the scene is not depicted as a violent act, but a comical one. The
dark-skinned mysterious man is portrayed in facetious appearance with his “woolly” hair and his
effortful attempt to “wriggle” to come out of dark hole (Hamid 2017, 6). This vignette alludes to
Conrad’s “heart of darkness” (Hamid 2017, 6), but Hamid does not rearticulate Marlow’s racial
judgement. Instead, Hamid illustrates the mysterious man’s impression as uncertainty, as stressed
by the word “perhaps” (Hamid 2017, 7). We interpret this vignette as an allegorical depiction of
the first contact between refugees and host societies, and such allegory demystifies an
imagination in which the coming of the former is perceived as a threat by the latter. It is also
important to note that the host societies are represented through sleeping, which means that they
are not aware of the crises that happen around the globe.
Hamid further describes the contrast between Saeed and Nadia when both protagonists arrive
at their first destination, Mykonos in Greece. As opposed to a homely place, the visualizations of
Mykonos do not represent the place as an ideal asylum for newcomers. Hamid compares
Mykonos by using the simile of “old-time gold rush” (Hamid 2017, 101) to indicate the risk of
living there. When they build their temporary camp near the hill, both protagonists also process
their situations differently. For Nadia, living in a new place and meeting new people in Mykonos
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It was Saeed in those days that the passage was both like dying and like being born, and
indeed Nadia experienced a kind of extinguishing as she entered the blackness and
gasping struggle as she fought to exit it, and she felt cold and bruised and damp as she
lay on the floor of the room at the other side. (Hamid 2017, 98)
are new enjoyments like “playing house” (Hamid 2017, 101), while Saeed feels guilty before his
ancestor because of his decision to leave home: “Saeed felt as he was doing it that he was a bad
son” (Hamid 2017, 101). Although they leave their former country as lovers, Hamid
metaphorically describes both protagonists’ separation on the scene when they hike upon the top
of the hill: “they gazed to the island, and out to sea…and they looked around each other, but they
did not see each other” (Hamid 2017, 103). This metaphorical gaze implies their involvement in
personal interest, but not their togetherness; “rekindling” (Hamid 2017, 139), until settlement in
London confirms Bhabha’s theory of space of solidarity, which is constructed when
unhomeliness occurs (1994).
Unlike Shamsie, Hamid sets London as a place of transit rather than a place for permanent
asylum. However, both of Hamid’s protagonists live in mixed refugee communities: “Nigerians,
later a few Somalis, after them a family from the borderlands between Myanmar and Thailand”
(Hamid 2017, 121). At this stage, Hamid continuously depicts how both protagonists react to
various situations differently from one another. To cope with her current condition, Nadia
constructs her transnational identity by joining a refugee discussion forum which is dominated by
Somalis and nuanced by “different variation of English” (Hamid 2017, 143). Additionally, she
personifies the birth of that council as “something new” (Hamid 2017, 145). Through this
representation of “being at one home,” Hamid symbolizes a multicultural unity of refugee
communities that transcends ethnicities, languages, and gender boundaries, and Nadia celebrates
this realm as she compares the council spirit through a simile of “University dormitory” (Hamid
2017, 129). In contrast to Nadia, Saeed prefers “outskirts of migrant camps” (Hamid 2017, 129),
similar to what he has done since his arrival in Mykonos. Instead of joining the council, he fears
diversity and his new experience of being “touched upon something basic, something tribal, and
evoked tension and sort of suppressed fear” (Hamid 2017, 146). Therefore, he prefers people of
Vicarage Gate who mostly speak “familiar languages and accents and familiar smell of the
cooking” (Hamid 2017, 148). Through this kinesthetic imagery of tribalism, Hamid explains how
Saeed occupies totalization in sorting his community. Totalization itself means a practice of
separating values by a migrant, which further determines his choice to join a community based
on similarities of roots to gather securities and comfort (Narayan 1997). In short, Saeed
constructs his sense of nostalgia by re-presenting auditory and gustatory imageries of his former
country in the current asylum.
Unhomely Home
This section explains how unhomeliness becomes the meaning of home on major Muslim
diasporic protagonists in Home Fire (2017) and Exit West (2017). On one hand, Shamsie portrays
how her protagonists defend unhomely London as their home or part of their desire for home. On
the other hand, Hamid represents how uncertainties within the asylum and conflicted former
homeland become both of his protagonists’ meaning of home. However, we also find that both
novels offer alternatives in imagining the concept of a nation.
According to Gilroy (2004), polarized perspectives in defining oneself are resulted by how the
War on Terror is constructed to be a perpetual emergency. He further describes that this skepticism
is usually a symptom of a multicultural conviviality within multicultural societies which facilitate
cultural contact zone both on national and cosmopolitan levels. This conviviality is also visualized
by both Shamsie and Hamid’s novels. In their former home, Nadia has a friend of Filipino descent,
and a Chinese restaurant becomes both Nadia and Saeed’s favorite dating place (Hamid 2017). In
Shamsie’s novel, the conviviality of coexistence between migrants and natives is also nuanced in
the visualization of London as previously explained. However, in both novels, the tension between
the native and “the other” is raised, and most of the conflicts are motivated by inter-ethnicities and
inter-religious community clashes that, at an extreme degree, result in violence.
Brah describes that the meaning of home implies both regularity and irregularity (1996).
Home itself is a mythic place of desire, but at the same time it is also the lived experience of a
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERARY HUMANITIES
When Aneeka talked about meeting him in Karachi over Easter, he enjoyed making
travel plans with her, their heads bent together over maps of Pakistan. Badshahi Mosque
and Kim’s Gun, the ruins of Taxila, the Peshawar Museum with the world’s largest
Gandhara collection, and in Karachi the studio of the music show they’d been listening
to since its inception a few years ago. (Shamsie 2017, 151)
As Brah (1996, 189) said, “home is a mythic place of desire” because even though the real
homeland can be reached, it does not always offer a space to which people can return. Shamsie’s
allegory above does not encourage the characters’ understanding of Pakistan as their ancestor’s
homeland, because as well as Isma, both experience otherness in encountering the locality of
Pakistan. This has been revealed in the analysis on not only the derogatory speech-act to Parvaiz
as explained in the previous section, but also Aneeka’s alienation when she arrives in Pakistan to
take his brother’s corpse to London. Shamsie portrays Aneeka’s alienation through a linguistic
device: the label “OVERSEAS PAKISTANI” on Aneeka’s badge, which signifies that even
though Aneeka is in Pakistan, she is always being positioned “outside” of Pakistan.
However, we also found that Aneeka occupies an in-between home. In this sense, the
meaning of home is defined through not only its materiality, but also symbolic representation of
home itself, such as interpersonal desire for intimacy (Brah 1996). Although she ignores her
Pakistani father and is alienated from Pakistan, she regards Pakistan as a part of her desire for home
through Parvaiz’s figure. She projects Parvaiz as her artificial ancestor that represents hybrid
individuals of Pakistani descent similar to herself, as can be seen in the quotation “he’s me”
(Shamsie 2017, 42). On the other hand, Shamsie underscores Aneeka’s lived experience of London
locality. At first, Aneeka was skeptical to Westerners and their values as seen in her sarcastic
comment on the Queen: “As an Asian, I have to admire her colour palette” (Shamsie 2017, 6).
However, Shamsie elaborates the metaphor of reading on Aneeka’s consciousness along with her
visit of Eamonn’s domestic space. In this sense, the naming of Eamonn, which comes from Arabic
term “ayman (‫[ ”)نميأ‬right], implies someone who encourages Western liberal values. Shamsie
presents a metaphor of reading through a gustatory imagery of “slices of lemon with salts, which
she did with her morning tea” that “transformed [Aneeka’s face] into a cartoon” (Shamsie 2017,
74). Indeed, the scene draws upon an unhomely eating habit, because homely dining for Aneeka
was Samosa of Naseem’s and Masala Omelet in her house in Preston. Nevertheless, instead of
turning into confusion, she defines both Parvaiz and Eamonn as her home.
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locality. At this stage, home is homogenous, because diasporas do not always bear the ideology
of “returning.” Consequently, homing desire “is not the same as the desire for a ‘homeland’” but
implies the structure of feeling which is built upon complex interlinking between material
dimension and symbolic representations of home (1996, 190). This complex interlinking process
of homing desire is represented on protagonists of both novels as discussed below.
In the context of Shamsie’s novel, Isma’s will to foster her family’s lives in London by
upgrading her cultural and economic value implies that her home will always be Preston Road in
Wembley, London. Although Isma once expressed America as her “home that made almost no
demands on you” (Shamsie 2017, 46), the symbolic representation of home of Isma’s flat is
nuanced by visual imageries of the Preston house, such as “[the] frame on her desk, which
contained an Arabic verse” (2017, 47). In addition, her grandma was also buried in Britain, and
her structure of feeling is always laid upon London. This is more evident as she was offended by
Eamonn’s remark, in which her flat in America is considered “Uncluttered” (Shamsie 2017, 46).
Nevertheless, she also ignores the imagination of Pakistan as well as Adil Pasha who will always
be an “absentee father” (Shamsie 2017, 47). In short, Isma aligns her position with the dominant
group of Londoners by assimilating and reporting Parvaiz’s departure to Syria with a reason:
“We’re in no position to let the state question our loyalties” (Shamsie 2017, 42).
In contrast to Isma, both Aneeka and Parvaiz romanticize their imagination of Pakistan as
portrayed through allegorical narratives of an imaginary mobility to Pakistani land:
In contrast, Parvaiz reconstructs his meaning of London as home after he experiences Raqqa
locality. At this point, it is interesting to note that Shamsie represents Daesh through Parvaiz’s
point of view. In the novel, Shamsie mentions how Parvaiz legitimizes his loss of humanity and
justifies Daesh’s hatred: “He, Mohammad bin Bagram, now numbered himself among the
animals” (Shamsie 2017, 170). However, we find that this act of self-Orientalizing was
Shamsie’s strategy to present a metaphor of Parvaiz’s inability to speak for himself, but she
avoids maintaining colonial authority over her Muslim protagonist’s voice by exploring Parvaiz’s
experience and “current history” (Shamsie 2017, 171). In that unhomely moment, Parvaiz
reconstructs the meaning of London which is narrated through a culinary symbolism: “Will be
home soon—biryani when I get there. Page 131 of the recipe book” (Shamsie 2017, 177). In the
citation, Shamsie mentions biryani which refers to specific culinary tradition of Muslims of the
Indian subcontinent. The food symbolizes the metaphor of merging within diversity as well as its
peculiar recipes and different combinations in each Indian region. In this sense, we interpret
Shamsie’s culinary symbolism as Parvaiz’s desire for London within the city’s diversity and
differences. Until the end of the novel, Shamsie’s tone is pessimistic since none of her
protagonists gain their actualizations; Isma lost both of her brother and sister, Aneeka died with
her lover, and Parvaiz lost a chance to come back to: “London. Home” (Shamsie 2017, 179).
This pessimistic tone correlates with Shamsie’s title, which is an allusion to the World War I
song “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” an English idiom which refers to a continuous effort of
treading home. Through her title, Shamsie underscores a message to his readers that no place is
home, and as a result, what we can do is keeping our “home fires” burning.
However, we find that Shamsie left an optimistically nuanced imaginary scene in the following
quotation: “For a moment they are two lovers in a park, under an ancient tree, sun-dappled,
beautiful and at peace” (Shamsie 2017, 260). In this scene, Shamsie alludes to ancient tree of
Ashvattha (अशवतथ) in Hindu mythology, which derives from a combination of the words “shva”
[tomorrow] and “tha” [the remaining of that will happen] (Dalal 2010, 44). Therefore, we interpret
that Shamsie offers her readers an alternative concept of an imagined inclusive nation which is built
upon love and caring, as imagined through the metaphor of love between Aneeka and Eamonn.
In Exit West, Hamid provides his readers a contrast between the meanings of home as
understood by his protagonists. After they live for quite some time in London and feel loss of
intimacy for each other, both Saeed and Nadia undergo segregation, which put barriers between
“light London,” an elegant and luxury place for natives, and “dark London,” where “rubbish
accrued” and high number of rape and robbery across and within refugee communities occurred.
The segregation itself is caused by the incident in which a native is shot by an unknown person, and
this raised the tension and conflict between natives and migrants/refugees. Therefore, under the
motive to live a better life and “rekindle” (Hamid 2017, 139) their relationship, they decide to go to
Marin, California. However, Saeed’s sense of nostalgia becomes more intense since he grows more
religious and maintains similarities in forming communities, as portrayed through his relationship
with a preacher’s daughter who “was born of a woman from Saeed’s country” (Hamid 2017, 218).
In short, even Saeed’s lived experiences in his former country result in unhomeliness as a war
occurs, and he maintains his ancestor’s homeland as the meaning of home.
In contrast to Saeed, Nadia’s desire for diversity, arts, and languages as found in the quotation
“tongues of a planet that would one day too be no more” (Hamid 2017, 37) leads her to embrace
Marin as her home. Hamid represents Marin as a city which symbolizes multiculturalism through
the symbolism of culinary and music, as found in the following excerpts: “many of world’s foods
were coming together and being re-formed in Marin” (Hamid 2017, 217) and “there was a great
creative flowering region, especially music. Some were calling this a new jazz age, and one could
walk around Marin and see all kinds of ensembles, humans with humans, humans with electronics,
dark skin with light skin with gleaming metal with matte plastic, computerized music and amplified
music” (Hamid 2017, 216). Through these symbolisms, Hamid informs his readers that Marin is a
hybrid cultural space that transcends boundaries of skin color, ages, and conservative values.
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RIVALDY ET AL.: RETHINKING HOME AND IDENTITY OF MUSLIM DIASPORA
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERARY HUMANITIES
However, Nadia prefers to use her black robe so that she “sent a signal” (Hamid 2017, 110), which
indicates that an asylum land such as Marin remains unhomely for female refugees since sexual
violence can occur anytime and anywhere.
Additionally, the cliché of contrasted home ideas above is negated by Hamid through
astronomical symbolism of the Milky Way. At the beginning of the novel, Hamid narrates that
both protagonists have shared a vision to visit Latin America “and see the Milky Way” (Hamid
2017, 21). The conversation of the Milky Way repeatedly occurs at the ending of the novel,
where Saeed and Nadia reunite in a café in their former country. In this sense, we argue that
Hamid offers his readers an inclusive transcultural contact zone as an idea of a nation similar to
that of Shamsie. The astronomical symbolism in Hamid’s writing itself implies another
extraordinary universe which is constructed by diversities. This idea of home correlates with
Hamid’s novel title, Exit West, which encourages a radical optimistic vision to alternate global
disparities. The novel’s title signifies its author’s invitation for his readers to exit from the
phantom of Western colonial and imperial legacies as well as from the concepts of Western
purity and superiority. However, as implied by its name, reaching the universe can only be done
through a continuous effort.
The proposition of meanings of identity and home for Muslim diaspora is complex. In this study,
we figure out how writers of Muslim heritage such as Shamsie and Hamid challenge dominant
Islamophobic discourses by complicating Muslim affiliations. In this sense, to be a Muslim is to
experience being as well as becoming. Their criticisms for established Muslim women
stereotypes and the simplification of complex ideas such as radicalism provide their readers
knowledge about how prejudices and binary/polarized perspective are problematic in
understanding Muslims and Islam. In addition, both novelists also represent unhomeliness as the
meaning of home for their Muslim protagonists. Consequently, they offer an alternative in
imagining an inclusive concept of a nation to attain reconciliation. Nonetheless, their use of
mythical and astronomical symbolism encourages such idea with the purpose of envisioning
since “a better future” is not a purpose per se. Their literary style also proclaims that togetherness
is a continuous project which must be sustained, and that love and passion should prevail in this
alternative concept of a nation.
The 9/11 incident left a cultural trauma of home for not only Americans (including the residing
migrants and newcomers), but also people around the globe who live side by side with Muslim
communities. Re-reading the tragedy itself through nostalgic view might also shape our current
imagination to build upon today and the future. As a consequence, many of us re-build our “homes”
or an imagination of a nation, even though we condemn to forget tragedies that took thousands of
victims away. Muslim narratives such as Home Fire and Exit West replace the disbelief on the
possibility of making a dialogue and silencing behind monolithic dimension of War on Terror.
Finally, by writing Muslim narratives, writers of Muslim heritage take their position in a site of a
continuous negotiation between Muslim migrants and host societies to gain reconciliation.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Universitas Indonesia’s research grant (PITMA B 2019) managed
by DRPM UI/Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education’s Research
Grant (PDUPT 2019).
36
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Conclusion
RIVALDY ET AL.: RETHINKING HOME AND IDENTITY OF MUSLIM DIASPORA
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Padel Muhamad Rallie Rivaldy: Postgraduate Student in Literature, Faculty of Humanities,
Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia
Manneke Budiman: Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok,
West Java, Indonesia
Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan: Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia,
Depok, West Java, Indonesia
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