In the previous lesson, we looked at an extract from Home Fire which in brief entails Aneeka at Eamonn’s home for the first time after they met. Eamonn saw Aneeka in a family photograph that Isma once showed to him and got struck by her beauty. Thus he went back to London and delivered the gift that Isma had for Aunty Naseem but the prime reason behind everything was so he could get the opportunity to see Aneeka’s beauty and satisfy his curiosity. Aneeka had a cold reaction towards Eamonn from the point she arrived back home and saw him with Aunty Naseem.
A lot happened between Aneeka and Eamonn from the moment that they first got acquainted with each other. Upon arrival at Eamonn’s house, Isma starts to taking off her hijab, signaling to Eamonn that she is ready to share an intimate moment with him as it was stated that, “She looked at him expectant”. It was not the first time that Eamonn experienced such kind of situation with women but since Aneeka is a Muslim and for that matter, wears a hijab, he was not certain if Aneeka really desired to share a bed with him which is why Aneeka took the lead in their act of intimacy. This is a bit unusual as men are normally expected to be the main driving forces during intimate instances. Eamonn is still quite overwhelmed and unbelieving the next morning after he indulged in sexual intercourse with Aneeka, a Muslim. He expected the house to look messy for him to believe that they had sex but the fact that things were in their right order filled him with uncertainty and confusion. The fact that they had sex together yesterday and that Aneeka woke up in the morning to pray startled Eamonn as he never really expected it which made him start to become a bit judgemental.
In the end, we compared the Home Fire extract with Yumna Al-Arashi’s photographs. We said that the two are similar in that they both represent Muslim women as being powerful, strong and not oppressed as people tend to think. There is also a similarity in that sense that both represent Muslim women wearing a hijab and in general how they have control over their hijab. Last but not least we looked at the fact that Al-Arashi’s photographs represent the Muslim woman all alone without anyone around her but rather just the physical landscape whereas in the extract it is Aneeka in interaction with the society.