Burnt Shadows

With the conclusion of Part 3, Shamsie explores how secrecy breeds tragedy and considers the human cost of international power struggles. Raza’s coming-of-age arc is completed by his humiliation, terror, and ultimate escape from the mujahideen camp, which shock him into a more adult understanding of the real danger at the heart of boyish notions of adventure. As Hiroko and Sajjad were both hindered and helped by the Burtons, Raza’s connection to Harry both endangers and saves him. Shamsie locates Raza’s final loss of innocence not at the mujahideen camp, but at home, where Raza confronts how his choices have resulted in the unintended consequence of Sajjad’s death. Harry and Raza, both having lost a father figure in Sajjad, trade blame for the murder, even though blame ultimately rests with Sher Mohammed, complicated by forces out of either Harry’s or Raza’s control. In Part 4, Shamsie will explore how Harry is able to exonerate himself of any wrongdoing, while Raza is still unable to let go of the burden of responsibility for Sajjad’s death. Upon his arrival back in Karachi, Raza “[knows], instantly, that there [is] no home any more” (246), and Shamsie will connect this final rupture in Raza’s idea of home to his failures to develop intimacy with Hiroko and others and his dislocated sense of self in Part 4.

Shamsie writes a fitting final scene for Sajjad in Chapter 25: Unable at first to parse the effects of the political on his personal life, Sajjad dies due to political forces that have nothing to do with him personally—only his willingness to befriend people across cultures and borders. Finally at peace with his decisions, secure in Hiroko’s love and confident in his own love for his son beyond his parental expectations, Sajjad achieves clarity just before his death. Shamsie also uses Sajjad to present a different, more secular portrayal of Islam, maintaining nuance, as always, among characters who share political or religious affiliations.

As with the echoes Shamsie portrays between the Cold War in Afghanistan and World War II in Japan, Sajjad’s death is presented as history repeating itself. As with Konrad, Hiroko scolds herself for not insisting that Sajjad stay home, and like Konrad, Sajjad’s death also represents the loss of the character in the novel least motivated by fear and therefore also the character who most represents cosmopolitan ideals. With Sajjad’s death, Shamsie suggests that it is very difficult to survive in a world defined by values contrary to one’s own.