Eyeless in Guantanamo: Vanishing Horizons in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows

Abstract

Any call to the horizon implies setting out from one’s home, territory or country to embark on a journey towards the unknown. Such a trajectory which informs narratives of migration and exile is a defining trait of diasporic studies. The perception of this trajectory has changed over the years with the contestation of Christian teleology, imperialism and global capitalism. After two World Wars, the horrific events of the Shoah and the nuclear holocaust, after the dislocation of traditional societies and mass-migrations of newly-indentured labour, the horizon has become a locus of fracture, trauma and division. Focusing on the politically charged horizons of Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows, from Nagasaki to pre and post-Partition India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the present paper examines fragmentation and the problem of identity in the context of the narrator’s fugitive condition.