Burnt Shadows

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-12

Part 3, Chapters 13-16

Part 3, Chapters 17-20

Part 3, Chapters 21-23

Part 3, Chapters 24-26

Part 4, Chapters 27-30

Part 4, Chapters 31-33

Part 4, Chapters 34-37

Part 4, Chapters 38-42

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 4, Chapters 27-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “The Speed Necessary to Replace Loss”

Part 4, Chapter 27 Summary

Part 4 opens in New York City in the year 2001, just three months after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Kim Burton, now in her mid-thirties, visits her grandmother, Ilse Weiss, at her apartment close to Ground Zero. Kim is moving back to New York after working as an engineer in Seattle. Kim smokes a cigarette, thinking briefly of her disapproving grandfather—James Burton, now deceased—and his disdain for Americans and modernity in general.

Kim tells Hiroko, now in her late seventies, that she plans to stay through the holidays to avoid awkwardness with the boyfriend she left behind in Seattle. Hiroko teases Kim for being a bad communicator and asks Kim what is going on in the world. Kim tells Hiroko that the last fires from September 11 are going out, and Hiroko offends her by replying, “That’s not the world, it’s just the neighborhood” (254). Ilse, now 91 years old, enters and explains to Kim that, to Hiroko, the scene at Ground Zero is less frightening than the current nuclear tensions between Pakistan and India. Hiroko asks Ilse if she has heard from Harry. Harry and Raza now work together in covert operations for a private military company, but Ilse and Kim maintain the cover story for Hiroko that Harry and Raza work in “the administrative side of private security” in Miami (256). Ilse announces that she talked to Harry yesterday and reports that Harry and Raza are okay, although she is not sure where they are in the world.

Hiroko feels uneasy in the New York apartment. Being several stories up reminds her of Abbottabad, a hill city in Pakistan, where she lived after Sajjad’s death with a German shepherd named Kyubi. After India tested its first nuclear bomb, there was pressure for Pakistan to do the same. Afraid, Hiroko planned to visit Ilse and then move to Miami with Raza but ended up never leaving New York and is still there after three years. Hiroko announces that Raza emailed to cancel his visit, and Ilse responds sarcastically. Hiroko calls out Ilse for not liking Raza any more than she liked Sajjad, and Ilse jokes that she was probably just in love with Sajjad. Hiroko laughs, grateful for Ilse’s friendship.

Part 4, Chapter 28 Summary

Chapter 28 opens on Raza in Afghanistan, where he works as a translator for the private military company Arkwright and Glenn (A&G). Raza previously only did office work, at Harry’s insistence, but was moved to the field when A&G was contracted by the US government to train third-country nationals (TCN) to fight the Taliban. After Sajjad’s death, Raza spent 10 years working for his uncle in Dubai at a luxury hotel. Hiroko wanted Raza to go to college, but Raza insisted on providing for her financially, actually wanting to escape his guilt over Sajjad’s death. Raza learned many new languages in Dubai and took many lovers. Now multilingual and still able to pass for an Afghan man, Raza is considered too valuable an asset to remain in Miami.

Raza drives to the Pakistan border to meet his cousin Sajjad (named for Raza’s father), who is in the Pakistan army. Cousin Sajjad tells Raza the name and current telephone number of the commander at the mujahideen camp Raza went to as a teenager. Sajjad was able to find this information because the ISI still has record of Raza Ashraf being sent there, supposedly by the Americans, due to Raza’s teenage lie. Sajjad counsels Raza against looking for Abdullah.

Raza drives back to the A&G base in Afghanistan and worries that Abdullah may now be part of the Taliban. Raza misses women and the emotional release of sex, which makes him feel “comprised of his father’s lightness and his mother’s boldness” (266). Raza arrives back at base, and a helicopter touches down, later revealed to be carrying Steve, the CIA operative Harry encountered in Islamabad.

Part 4, Chapter 29 Summary

In New York, Kim interrupts Hiroko and Ilse chatting, frantic to find Harry after hearing about an attempted plane hijacking on a flight to Miami. Unable to calm Kim, Ilse calls Harry, who answers and confirms that he is okay. Kim, still upset, declares that she wants “the world to be as it was” (270). Ilse reminds Kim of all that she has survived—“Hitler, Stalin, the Cold War, the British Empire, segregation, apartheid” (271)—and assures Kim that the world will go on, encouraging Kim to rest. Ilse realizes that Kim’s fear is actually related to a sense of being out of control—the same fear that motivates her work as an engineer. Ilse tries to lighten the mood with a raunchy story about her cousin Willie when she first came to New York.

One morning days later, while Kim is away in Seattle packing, Hiroko finds Ilse’s body. Hiroko notes that death can be peaceful as well as violent. Hiroko calls Raza and tells him to be kind to Harry, as his mother has just died, then calls Kim.

Part 4, Chapter 30 Summary

Harry travels to New York for Ilse’s funeral and walks with Kim. Kim admits that part of why she wants to live in New York is that she knew as soon as the first plane hit the Twin Towers that the structure would fall, comparing herself to the doomed Greek seer Cassandra. Now, Kim wants to aid in rebuilding. Harry suggests that Kim is being dramatic and admits that he was not surprised by the 9/11 attacks and that the aftermath has been good for business at A&G. Harry doesn’t tell Kim that he was also profoundly affected by 9/11, but he promises Kim they will spend more time together.

Harry and Kim find Hiroko staring at a sex shop mannequin. Hiroko remembers Ilse stopping in front of the same mannequin on her 90th birthday, noting Ilse’s late-life love affairs. Hiroko joins Harry and Kim, and Kim briefly imagines that they will all travel to Delhi, with Raza, too, whom Kim has never met. Hiroko sees a missing person flyer for a victim of 9/11 and is reminded of similar flyers in Nagasaki.

The group walks through Chinatown, where Hiroko sees a sign for Hong xao, a fruit that she hasn’t seen since Nagasaki. Harry recognizes the fruit as bair—its name in Urdu. Hiroko recalls that Harry asked her permission before inviting Raza to work with him at A&G, promising her that he wouldn’t let Raza get hurt. Harry, Kim, and Hiroko sit in a park and eat the fruit. Kim announces that she plans to stay with Hiroko in Ilse’s apartment for a while. Hiroko notices that the fruit Kim is eating is unripe and must taste awful. Kim admits she didn’t want to offend Hiroko, and Hiroko sighs at Kim’s “cultural sensitivity.” They banter, and Harry smiles, pleased that the Tanaka-Ashraf family and the Weiss-Burton family are still connected.

Part 4, Chapters 27-30 Analysis

The title of Part 4, “The Speed Necessary to Replace Loss,” alludes to Sri Lankan Canadian author Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel The English Patient and invites comparison with that novel’s content and themes. Ondaatje’s novel follows four people from different nationalities brought together by World War II, one of whom is terribly burned. Ondaatje’s novel ends with the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and questions whether the bomb would have been dropped on a predominately white nation. Shamsie sets up Burnt Shadows as an extension, almost, of Ondaatje’s novel, beginning where he ends and carrying the story of cross-cultural intimacy and the effects of the geopolitical on the personal into the post-9/11 world, simultaneously tracking a through-line from World War II to the War in Afghanistan.

Shamsie begins the final portion of her novel by literalizing the death of the old world in the death of Ilse Weiss. Ilse’s list of world events can be read in one of two ways. Optimistically, Ilse’s age and experience suggest that people always find a way to keep living, even in the midst of tragedy. The darker lesson of Ilse’s list of tragedies, however, is that even the most horrible events in history have a way of repeating themselves. The final section of the novel explores this tension, as Ilse’s world of clearly stated allegiances has been replaced by the moral complexity of modern geopolitics, and Ilse herself has abandoned strict social rules for a life defined by personal desires. Through Ilse’s sexual liberation contrasted with Kim’s post-9/11 paranoia and Hiroko’s lingering sense of displacement, Shamsie suggests that the blurred borders of rapid globalization have created both the opportunity for greater personal freedom and increased anxiety about belonging.

Shamsie’s narrative itself has been fractured by the traumatic events of Parts 1-3. Part 4 features more point-of-view characters and unique settings than any other portion of the novel, reflecting the increasing complexity of geopolitics, the destabilizing effects of two generations of constant warfare, and the more complex sense of morality on the national scale in the post-Cold War era. Shamsie also crafts New York City in particular as a cosmopolitan city—making it all the more interesting as the location of an event that inspires nationalism and paranoia.

Even Harry’s appreciation that the two families are still connected reads as subtly ominous; throughout the novel, connection with the Weiss-Burtons has been both helpful and harmful to the Tanaka-Ashrafs. Kim’s anxiety is specific to being a white American, and Shamsie is careful to use the other characters of the novel to place Kim’s feelings in perspective; for example, Hiroko loves Kim but is frustrated by what she considers as Kim’s narrow point of view in equating Ground Zero with the world at large. Hiroko has experienced trauma both more acutely and on larger scales yet resists reducing the world to her own sphere of experience, as Kim seems to do. Shamsie explores the relationship between national tragedy and nationalism further in Harry, who is surprised at his own sense of solidarity with his adopted country. As Raza’s need to belong made him vulnerable to exploitation, Shamsie suggests that fear inspires nationalist attitudes, as people seek the safety of numbers and fight to preserve the national aspects of their identity as they perceive them. Home and identity are still linked in the adult Raza, who is ultimately not able to feel at home anywhere in the world because of his inner turmoil. Raza’s secrecy, compounded by his guilt, have made it difficult for him to experience real intimacy, even as his accumulation of foreign languages enables him to connect superficially with a wide array of people. Raza could embody the ideals of Konrad Weiss, if only he could learn to accept himself first.