Kamila Shamsie tells Susannah Butter about headscarf politics and why Lionel Shriver is wrong on diversity
going to be tough on Brits joining IS.” With apologies to Verma, telling him she owed him a play, she had to turn it into a novel.
The play starts with two sisters whose brother has been a traitor and died, as the state wonders how to respond..
“We sometimes think we are in this moment that is like nothing else and can get terrified by that,” says Shamsie. “But Antigone’s problems were contemporary. And then IS was so medieval and barbaric, yet employing the most contemporary technology.”
A Muslim Home Secretary character felt far fetched at first. “I wanted an intimate, familial element in this large political story but I thought that I couldn’t have a Home Secretary from the same community as the person who had gone off to fight jihad. They would have to be fairly Right-wing in their politics because in the play they have a Tough on Terror line. I thought Tory, Muslim, migrant son, Home Secretary — surely not. This was before Sadiq Khan had said he was going to run for Mayor but we did have him, Sajid Javid and Sayeeda Warsi fairly prominent.”
Deliberately, she avoided finding out too much more about them, “because I wanted to to create my own guy. But the guy I created has all kinds of resonances with Sajid Javid. It’s weird.”
Nicola Sturgeon has tweeted about the novel but as far as Shamsie is aware no other politicians have read it. “I don’t want to say that I think politicians could learn from it,” she says modestly. “But it is interesting if you are only used to looking at from a policy angle to see a new side. Writing the novel I felt my sympathies and perspectives shifting. I like Isma, one of the sisters, but when I had to write from the Home Secretary’s view, who she hates, I found myself understanding him too.”
When she started the novel, Shamsie was “a newly minted British citizen”. “So the idea of stripping people of citizenship felt urgent. I was writing against the idea that you can’t be Muslim and British. The characters in the book are angry at certain government policies but I don’t know a Brit who isn’t.”
Being Muslim for her is “like being left-handed. I am and I always have religion in your life too.”
The question “are you Muslim?”, is usually followed by “are you practising?” “My Jewish friends are never asked that. It comes out of a mistrust of Islam. You were born Muslim but to know you better we need to know what kind of a Muslim you are. One of the successes of al Qaeda and IS is that they’ve made their Islam the mainstream one.”
Writing the book made her feel more of a Londoner. “I wondered how I’d one day wake up and feel British, but writing this book I felt like British writer, not an outsider.” Her mother went to boarding school in Surrey and her family came on holiday to London when she was growing up (“we loved the rain”) — eventually she decided to stay.
Shamsie has never worn a headscarf but is supportive of women who do. “The Queen wears a headscarf, it’s not so ‘other’ but discussions about it have been linked to conversations about Muslims being weird and not like us. Malala Yousafzai wears a hijab and is the most independent-minded, strong woman, so if you’re trying to make it a sign of oppression that is not going to work. I don’t see why six-year-old girls are wearing them though — even in Islam it’s linked to puberty.”
“There are problems all over the place with it,” she adds. “When capitalism says ‘let’s take this over, there is the Muslim market, let’s have a modest collection’ — I object to it being called modest. Am I immodest by not wearing it? Am I a harlot? I do think the essence is a male/ female issue about the gaze, though.”
The relationship at the centre of the novel is driven by desire but Shamsie was careful about sex scenes. “They can go badly wrong. You can’t be too anatomical — this body bit did that to this bit. You need to give a sense of what that meant.”
What’s next? “I want to know — do you have any ideas for me?” She laughs. “The terrible truth is I am bad at writing in London — I get distracted. This makes me sound like a ridiculous poncy writers but I started Home Fire in Brazil.” She’s watching a lot of cricket at the moment, “because that’s what you do if you are from Pakistan”, and “being a bum,” she jokes. “But now I’m ready to write the next thing.” All eyes will be on what she predicts now.