Burnt Shadows

Both Hiroko and Raza are polyglots, and Shamsie uses the teaching and translating of foreign languages throughout the novel—both figuratively and literally—to represent the limits and possibilities of cross-cultural intimacy.

Hiroko’s relationships with both Konrad and Sajjad begin with acts of translation, as she teaches Konrad Japanese and learns Urdu from Sajjad. Hiroko’s facility with languages matches her cultural fluency, and she is as quick to accept differences in others as she is to pick up new idioms.

Shamsie also connects speaking multiple languages to the concept of translating the self into new identities: Hiroko must re-make her sense of home several times throughout the novel in India, Pakistan, and New York; the German Ilse Weiss translates herself into Elizabeth Burton to please her English husband, then back again when she leaves him; Raza translates himself into the Afghan “Raza Hazara” but fails to find an identity of his own, despite his multiple fluencies, until he returns to Urdu, his first language, in the final confrontation with Kim.

There are many instances of literal translation throughout the novel, and Shamsie uses each one to illustrate either the possibility of understanding one another, such as when Raza learns Pashto from the bus driver, or the limitations of language’s ability to create understanding, such as when Kim and Abdullah misconstrue each other’s words through the lens of their own prejudices on the way to Canada. Raza also refuses to translate for prisoners who are being tortured, not willing to use a tool of intimacy to facilitate violence. 

Shamsie uses kyubi, or Japanese foxes, to emphasize Hiroko and Sajjad’s enduring love. Crucially, kyubi can represent either good or ill fortune in Japanese mythology, and although Hiroko and Sajjad are happily married, their marriage is destined to end in tragedy. By incorporating this classically Japanese imagery after their Islamic ceremony, Shamsie also gives Hiroko and Sajjad’s marriage both Japanese and Islamic aspects, representing their cross-cultural union. Hiroko and Sajjad keep a painting of two foxes in their home to symbolize their kindred spirits and the blessing of their marriage, and Hiroko finds comfort in the fox painting after Sajjad has died.

The story of Mohammed and the spider represents the cross-cultural and cross-generational connection between the Tanaka-Ashraf and Weiss-Burton families, who alternately rescue and endanger one another throughout the novel. In the story, Mohammed is saved from his pursuers when a spider weaves a web over the opening of the cave in which he is hiding. The pursuers, seeing the web, assume that no one has entered the cave for a long time, and so Mohammed remains hidden and is saved.

While the story symbolizes the cycles of rescue within the Tanaka-Ashrafs’ and Weiss-Burtons’ relationship, it is also explicitly referenced by most of the major characters in the novel. Hiroko and Sajjad first find a deeper connection when Hiroko reveals she is familiar with the story, which is well-known to Muslims. Sajjad, charmed, realizes that Hiroko, also a friend of Konrad’s, shares an interest in other cultures and people, and deeper intimacy is forged by this shared appreciation. Hiroko even reminds Ilse, who is frightened by a spider in the garden at Bungle Oh! early in the novel, that she must not harm the spider out of respect for her Muslim staff. Hiroko’s insistence on cultural sensitivity to those around her slowly helps the repressed Ilse to become more aware of her surroundings and leave James Burton. Harry Burton, for his part, sees the story only as a positive indication of the enduring connection between the families. Raza, however, maintains awareness of both the Muslim respect for spiders and the disgust for spiders innate in others, seeing the spider “as well as its shadow” (364). 

The cashmere jacket, a luxurious item of clothing first given to Sajjad by James, then passed on to Raza, represents Sajjad’s hopes to transcend poverty and become an attorney. When Sajjad is not able to achieve his dreams, he passes both the dream and the jacket on to Raza, literally investing his son with the expectations he once had for himself. Ilse’s initial poor reaction to Sajjad wearing the cashmere jacket reveals her discomfort with Sajjad’s potential class mobility. At the end of the novel, Kim finds dried rose petals in the pocket of the jacket in Raza’s apartment in Miami, suggesting that the dream has been set aside and allowed to wither. Cashmere is also a fabric originating in India, suggesting that when James gives Sajjad the jacket, he is also in a sense returning India to Sajjad, as the British Raj ends.