Reimagining Antigone for the Age of Extremism
A Conversation with Kamila Shamsie
by Chris McDonough and Stephanie McCarter
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In Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie offers a provocative contemporary update of Sophocles’ Antigone. The novel centers on three British siblings of Pakistani descent, older sister Isma (Shamsie’s Ismene) and 19-year old twins Aneeka and Parvaiz (Antigone and Polynices). When Parvaiz joins ISIS and is killed in Syria, his sisters become entangled with the family of British Home Secretary Karamat Lone (Creon), including his son Eamonn (Haemon) and wife Terry (a brilliantly adapted Tiresias).
Like all successful retellings, Home Fire stands on its own merits — no familiarity with Sophocles is needed to appreciate the novel’s elaborate interweaving of family and state. Like the most successful retellings, the novel casts new light on the original. With a particularly deft hand, Shamsie exposes the complex depths of humanity in Sophocles’ characters and displays how germane the story of the Antigone remains in today’s geo-political landscape. The novel was rightly longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for 2017.
Chris McDonough (CM) and Stephanie McCarter (SM) recently spoke with Kamila Shamsie (KS) to discuss Home Fire, Sophocles, and the larger legacy of ancient Greece in Pakistan.
SM: As I am sure you are aware, there are questions swirling at the moment around the legacy of Classics, which is far too often dangerously exploited as “white” and “western European.” Were you consciously challenging this claim, taking this story studied routinely in the Classics classroom and filling it with circumstances particular to a community that doesn’t always find itself represented there?
KS: It’s a question I’ve been asked before, and it’s a good question — but I haven’t been asked quite that. I’ve been asked about the way Greek Classics are seen as a sort of cornerstone of Western Civilization and whether that was in mind. I really had to stop the first time I was asked it because it hadn’t crossed my mind. And I realized the reason it hadn’t crossed my mind was because I’m so aware of Greek Civilization as being a part of the world I came from.
Some of my favorite archaeological finds are in Pakistan. You have the old Gandhara Civilization, which was a mix of Greek, Indo-Greek, Indian, Buddhist, all of that. One of my favorite things at the archaeological site of Taxila is a mini stupa, and it’s got the figure of the Buddha around one of the top tiers, but at the very bottom tier there’s the figure of Atlas holding up the Buddha.
And so, when I grew up I remember from a very young age — because I was always fascinated by the Greeks and Greek Mythology and Alexander the Great — I remember when I was probably about 5 or 6 looking at a map of where Alexander’s armies went through and realizing that where I was, Karachi, was the place where Nearchus’ fleet had gone through. So since I was a child I’ve been really interested in the Greeks in India and the Indian subcontinent.
I actually think it is quite amusing that Ancient Greece is considered the cornerstone of Western Civilization. To me those divisions simply aren’t true. You had an Indo-Greek kingdom and some of the greatest art that comes out of the subcontinent is infused with Greek artistry and mythology and the gods. But it’s also infused with a very local, native influence. There’s that marriage of the two. So I suppose I was continuing on my understanding that actually the Greeks are part of everything really. Certainly they’re a part of life in Pakistan.
CM: We were just saying before this interview started that Alexander the Great founded three cities in Pakistan — but I don’t believe he founded a single one in North America! But let me ask you about Sophocles’ Antigone. In the play, the brother Polynices is a terrifying figure who brings wide scale destruction. In Home Fire, by contrast, the brother Parvaiz regrets what he’s done by joining ISIS and wants to return home to Britain. So you make him somewhat sympathetic. But did you toy at all with the idea of his being an unsympathetic character — would that have changed your story?
KS: It wouldn’t have changed the story. One of the things that I knew when I set out to do this was that I couldn’t be too tied to Sophocles, that I didn’t want someone that knew the play to read the novel and know every single thing that was going to happen. So I wanted there to be moments where actually there was a great divergence so that you’d never know if the next moment was going to be as Sophocles would have done or based on Sophocles but going up at an angle.
I really was looking at Antigone first of all without looking at any of the other plays around it which might tell us more about Polynices. And within Antigone, Polynices is really absent as a character. We know Creon’s version that he’s a traitor, but you don’t really have who he is particularly in there. So you have, yes, the chorus saying what they do, but you could say, “Well, that’s propaganda.”
But who was he really? Surely his sisters are in a better position to know who he was really. And so I started with that. What if, taking out everything we might know about Polynices from other sources and plays, we start with just this play? We have one version of him that says he’s the traitor — he brings destruction. But then, we have this other version where certainly one of the sisters loves him dearly enough to want to metaphorically or not climb into the grave with him. And I thought it would be interesting to have someone where that division between the public version of him and the private version of him was quite acute.
I suppose I am generally interested in telling the more unexpected stories. The story of the young British men who go from Britain to join ISIS usually is very one track: they go because they’re drawn to the violence, and they’re terrible, violent misogynists. Actually, if you start researching around the area, you see a lot of them are very young, a lot are teenagers, a lot are quite clearly being groomed on-line and in person, and a lot are being drawn to the more subtle form of propaganda that isn’t about “Come and fight.” It’s about “Come and live here, you’ll have a better life.” And I thought, ‘Well that’s not the story that’s ever told. Wouldn’t that be a more interesting story perhaps to follow?’
SM: One of the most pronounced of the Antigone’s themes is gender, particularly as it is manifested as power — even toxic masculinity. In the play, we see this in Creon’s fears about being bested by a woman and in his concerns about his son’s virility, but this really goes well beyond the character of Karamat Lone in the book. How did you map the gender dynamics of the play onto the novel?
KS: It is quite striking from the beginning, where you have Ismene saying, “We’re women. We need to be quiet.” And then of course Creon is so — the gender stuff is so clear with him. I wanted that in there, but I didn’t want Karamat Lone to become some kind of parody figure. In the 21st century, to be saying those kinds of things publicly, if you’re a public figure — I thought it wouldn’t quite work for him.
But I did still want there to be some sense where when he’s talking to his son about Aneeka, essentially he’s really viewing her only as this sort of sex object, believing that his son is going along with what she’s saying because of some sexual hold she has on him and really denying her an agency of intelligence and character.
But I also sort of transposed the toxic masculinity that comes out in Creon onto the story of Parvaiz and the way in which he’s groomed — the way in which he’s made to feel that he’s inadequately masculine and that he shouldn’t be allowing his sisters to tell him what to do. And so, rather than focusing all that toxic masculinity on Creon/Karamat, I wanted to diffuse it through the novel more and place more of it on Parvaiz, on [the ISIS recruiter] Farooq, but ultimately of course on all of Islamic State, which is just reeking of it.
SM: The question of gender also comes out in the relationship between women and religion. Antigone of course makes claims to a sphere of religion, burial, that was very much at the heart of women’s life in the ancient world. Can you say a little bit about your thinking as you developed the relationship Isma and Aneeka have with Islam?
KS: I was thinking that I wanted to get away from the narrative that if you are a woman wearing a hijab then you are an oppressed woman — that boring, tedious kind of narrative. I actually want to show how these are two sisters who are both practicing in some way, but one much more so than the other. One feels it much more deeply than the other.
I wanted to have in there something that you rarely see in portrayals of Muslims: that, yes, religion is one component of their lives, but it isn’t everything. It’s not that everything they do is guided by religion. And I was also thinking of the way Antigone certainly talks about the religious aspect of burial, but it’s not the only thing she talks about. There are other points where she is talking about her great love for her brother, and there are other points when she’s talking in terms that we would now recognize as civil liberties discourse.
And so at one moment it seems that it’s a religious component that’s strongest in her, but there are other things going on as well that I wanted to bring into the sisters’ lives. Yes, they are Muslim. They are in whatever different ways practicing, believing, but there are times, particularly for Aneeka, when that becomes background — whereas for Isma, it’s much more central to her life. So the very ways in which religion can move in and out of people’s lives was something that I saw in the play and I wanted to bring into the novel.
CM: Is it possible to speak at all about Parvaiz’s sexuality? You know, he’s quite smitten with Farooq, the ISIS recruiter. He notices “the shape of his tightly fitting bomber jacket” and “the hair that fell in ringlets to his shoulders.” Farooq refers to Parvaiz as a brother, and stands in for him as a kind of father figure, but Aneeka and Isma think that he’s involved in a secret affair. Is Parvaiz’s sexuality a part of the story?
KS: It is. But it’s an ambiguous part, because I think it’s probably ambiguous to Parvaiz as well. I didn’t want to be too explicit with any part of that because I don’t think Parvaiz is conscious of his attachment being in any way homoerotic, but I think that’s certainly an element there. Farooq calls him a brother, but we’ve got a source text that starts with the incest of Oedipus. If you want to make something of that, you could.
One of the things that was striking to me is that, in the research I was doing, someone sent me a video that ISIS used for propaganda. It was not a violent video. It was quite the opposite, sending out greetings on the Muslim holy day of Eid. This video showed very young and incredibly good-looking men. I mean they were all gorgeous. And that was being used to recruit other young men. It was very striking to me just how beautiful they were, every single one of them.
It made me start thinking about how often there can be a very blurry line in relationships that we talk of in far more binary terms: was it homosexual or was it heterosexual? Theirs was very much playing along the border of it. And Farooq may have been aware of this and deliberately playing it up. And I think Parvaiz was being lured by it but not really knowing exactly what was going on, just aware that he had certain kinds of feeling for this man that he had never had for anyone.
SM: You just mentioned the incestuous strain that runs through the family of Oedipus. It struck me that there’s a bit of that between Aneeka and Parvaiz. I’m thinking in particular of the specific ways she seems to be recasting Eamonn, her lover, as a kind of a brother figure to her. Is this something that you were perhaps taking from the Antigone — because there of course the relationship between Antigone and Polynices also seems to skirt the line with incest?
KS: Yes, you know it certainly was. I don’t think the two of them had an incestuous relationship, but these feelings are so overwhelming — you don’t know where to put them. With her brother gone, there’s all this loss. And there’s Eamonn and he’s near the same age as her brother. I think she’s trying to recapture some elements of her brother in him. I wouldn’t use the word “incestuous” because I think that’s too laden and it makes it sound as though she and her brother had a relationship — they didn’t. But I think she’s certainly taking aspects of the relationship with her brother and trying to place them on Eamonn and trying to recreate something of that closeness she had with Parvaiz. There is a sort of murkiness and confusion around it.
CM: Can we talk a little about Karamat Lone, the novel’s Creon figure? A headline in the newspaper at one point asks about his motive, “National interest or personal animus?” And his wife Terry later says to him, “Be human.” Do you mind spinning each of those ideas out for us?
KS: He’s someone who so adamantly wants to be seen, and wants to see himself, as only acting in national interest — but it’s his son. There’s no way there’s no personal feeling involved. Again, he’s so conscious that he doesn’t want to be caught doing anything wrong that he convinces himself that he would have done everything the same way if his son wasn’t involved, which is impossible. Part of Terry’s saying “Be human” is also her saying, “Acknowledge that you’re human and acknowledge that part of yourself.”
If we’re going to talk about those sort of blurry relationships, there’s Karamat and his son, who loved him most in the world. And now his son appears to love some other woman more, who is getting his son to act against him. I think Karamat’s probably quite jealous that his son is no longer looking at him as the center of the world, as the most wonderful person in the world, but that there’s someone else who his attentions have gone to.
He so wants to see himself as the leader who will only think of the nation that he doesn’t allow himself to see the bit of him that is feeling personally wounded and betrayed. And so, when Terry says to him, “Be human,” she’s not only saying ‘be human’ in your dealings with that girl and her dead brother, she’s also saying, “Be human in how you look at yourself and acknowledge your own human feelings in all of this.”
CM: Can I ask you a question about genre? I know that you were originally approached about doing this story as a play, but you opted to write it as novel, a more natural medium for you. Does a novel have advantages that drama lacks?
KS: Well, I won’t say that a novel has something that drama lacks. It’s more that I know how to do one and I don’t know how to do the other. And I kept hitting up against the fact that one of the things I love in a novel is interiority of characters. I would hate to give that up, particularly with someone like Isma. So much of the story is her alone just thinking and reflecting and being in the world, not in dialogue with people.
I don’t read Greek so I haven’t actually read Sophocles, but I was particularly struck when I was reading the Anne Carson translation that there’s one point where Creon wants to hold Ismene accountable for what happens and to punish her as well. But Antigone says, “Hold on, what are you doing? You can’t be part of my death.” To which Ismene responds, “I’ll be so lonely.” When I read that, it sort of struck at my heart. Often people talk about the play as if Antigone is this heroic figure and Ismene was just too scared to take on authority. But the more I thought about it, the more she did seem to me someone who recognizes she’s lost all her family except this one sister, and she’s trying to hold onto her and keep her from harm. That is a story I would like to tell. The Ismene/Isma character is actually much more silent than her sister, but there’s a lot going on in there. The novel really allowed me to show who she is in silence in a way that I wouldn’t know how to do in a play.
SM: The line you’re speaking of in the Antigone has always struck me as opening up a perspective in Ismene that you don’t hear Antigone articulate: that life is actually worth championing. Some positive aspects of human life, such as sisterhood, peek through in the character of Ismene. I really love the way you develop this perspective through Isma’s interior world. Even in the midst of hardship she can ponder, as you put it, the “deep pleasure of daily life.”
KS: I just kept thinking that through Ismene/Isma, you have a sense of what it means if you’ve had a lot of loss in your life. One of the ways in which that can go is you really hold onto the things you still have to hold onto, and you appreciate the days when grief and loss aren’t knocking at your door. You are able to simply get on with the small pleasures of being alive and of thinking and loving and being in the world.
CM: The ending of the novel is really something, though I don’t want to give it away. No spoilers! Of course, the play ends with a choral ode:
the first rule of a happy life: wisdom
second rule: don’t work against the gods
you big men with your big words
pay a big price for that
but in the end
you learn wisdom too
even you
It’s nice to have a chorus wrap things up for you. The novel doesn’t do that, but should we be hearing that chorus at the very end, that there is a harsh sort of divine wisdom that we’re being instructed in? Or is that something that we’re deliberately not being told?
KS: Well, I would hope that the novel ends on a point which forces you to think beyond the moment it ends at. We don’t want to get spoilery, but I would want you as a reader to be aware of the fact that there are people watching what’s been happening. This is a thing that’s being replayed on screens. So, yeah, go beyond that moment, be the chorus yourself. What are your thoughts arising from this? Are your thoughts: “We need to change the path we’re going along”? Are your thoughts: “Well, they deserved it”? Are your thoughts: “Poor Isma”? I hope that the point at which the novel cuts off causes the reader to think beyond the moment to the other characters within the novel as they respond to what’s happened. So yes, I suppose I would hope for the readers to play the role of chorus themselves.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of several previous novels, including Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows. She has been a finalist for the Orange Prize (twice) and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, among other honors, and has been named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was raised in Karachi and lives in London.
Chris McDonough is Professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. An essay of his, “Yon Gray Head,” was published last year in Eidolon. His book, Pontius Pilate on Screen: Sinner, Soldier, Superstar, will soon be appearing from Edinburgh University Press.
Stephanie McCarter is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She is the author of Horace between Freedom and Slavery: The First Book of Epistles (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015). Her writing has appeared previously in Eidolon as well as in The Millions, Literary Hub, Avidly, and Gucci Stories.
The conversation above has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. We would like to thank Adam Hawkins for all his technical help, and Zach Zimmerman for his meticulous transcription.
