Karamat

Chapter 8

1. Read the passage below. What insights does it offer into Karamat Lone’s political ambition?

He gulped down the coffee, felt it burn its way pleasingly through him while he continued to look at the
Palace of Westminster… The heart of tradition, everyone agreed, but few understood Britain as well as
Karamat Lone and knew that within the deepest chamber of that heart of tradition was the engine of
radical change.

Here Britain whittled down the powers of the monarchy, here Britain agreed to leave its empire, here
Britain instituted universal suffrage,here Britain would see the grandson of the colonized take his
place as prime minister. The most constant criticism against Karamat Lone was that his positions flip-
flopped between traditionalist and reformer —but the critics learned nothing from their own inability
to know which was which. Take, for instance, his intention to expand the home secretary’s power to
revoke British citizenship so that it applied to British-born single passport holders. It was, clearly, the
sensible fulfillment of a law that was so far only half made. You had to determine someone’s fitness for
citizenship based on actions, not accidents of birth. An increase in draconian powers! said one set of
his opponents on the left; a renewed assault on true Englishmen and -women by Britain’s migrant
population, said another set on the far right. Both sets probably drank coffee out of insulated mugs.

You’re doing the contemptuous thing again, Terry would say. It was one of his wife’s few remaining
misconceptions about him. Contempt, disdain, scorn: these emotions were stops along a closed loop
that originated and terminated in a sense of superiority. In their preservation of the status quo they
were of no use to Karamat Lone.

A man needed fire in his veins to burn through the world, not ice to freeze everything in place. He’d
thought he had mastered the art of directing the fire, but yesterday, with TV cameras on him, he’d
heard the girl’s one-line explanation for leaving England and hadn’t been able to stop himself from
responding: “She’s going to look for justice in Pakistan?” That final word spoken with all the disgust
of a child of migrants who understands how much his parents gave up—family, context, language,
familiarity—because the nation to which they first belonged had proven itself inadequate to the task of
allowing them to live with dignity.

2. What do you think Karamat means when he contrasts fire and ice? How does this connect to
the use of this motif elsewhere in the text?

3. In the passage below Aneeka makes direct reference to Sophocles’ play. Why does Karamat
think she has made a mistake here? Is he right?

4. When Isma visits Karamat in his home and asks to be allowed to go to Karachi, he thinks that
she is ‘among those that could be saved’. What does this suggest about the Home Secretary’s
way of thinking about the world?

5. Isma surprises Karamat by drawing a parallel between her brother, Parvaiz, and his son,
Eamonn. In what ways are these two characters similar?

Chapter 9
1. Working in pairs, revisit Antigone. Identify three ways in which the presentation of Karamat
echoes that of Creon in the original text. Match quotations from the two texts and explain how
Shamsie’s adaptation has reinforced, challenged or added to, Sophocles’ character.

2. Read through the argument between Karamat and his wife Terry on pp. 252-524, up to the
lines ‘Be human. Fix it.’ What passage in Antigone does this dialogue most closely mimic?
Which character does Terry correspond to?

3. No, he would fix it, for his son, for the girl, and then he would tell Terry. He stretched out on
the sofa, arms crossed over his chest, eyes open. Who would keep vigil over his dead body,
who would hold his hand in his final moments? What does this suggest about Karamat’s
reasons for changing his mind?

4. To what extent is Karamat Lone a tragic figure?

5. What is your interpretation of the final sentence of the novel?