Hollow Fires

Part II establishes the effects of Islamophobia on Jawad and Safiya’s lives, foreshadows the spiritual connection between Jawad and Safiya through the hand of Fatima symbol, and introduces the antagonist, Ghost Skin. The author builds on the theme of Effects of Islamophobia on Individuals & Communities through Jawad’s teachers and classmates’s ostracization of him after his false arrest, giving him the nickname Bomb Boy. As Jawad explains how the media portrayed him and his family following his arrest, he criticizes the way “the news reports kept calling us Iraqis. Eye-rack-eez. That’s how they said it. Like we weren’t Americans at all” (15). Jawad chooses not to report the threatening text messages leading up to his murder because of the abuse he’s received as Bomb Boy at school and on the news. The author suggests that had Jawad not been bullied, racially profiled and treated with hate by his classmates and teachers, he may have been more likely to reach out when threatened and received support that could’ve saved his life. 

Ahmed structures her plot to connect Jawad’s Islamophobic experiences with other local incidents at the time of his murder leaving a trail of clues for her protagonist to follow. In the days leading up to Jawad’s death, a threatening letter is sent from London to Safiya’s mosque, and a “racist, anti-Black meme [is] posted on [DuSable Prep’s] Facebook page” for which the school claims no responsibility (27). The author uses these details to demonstrate a pervasive atmosphere of Islamophobia in Safiya and Jawad’s city, even though they attend separate schools, supporting the author’s larger argument that dismissing or ignoring hate speech can lead to widespread and violent consequences for both individuals and communities. 

The author introduces the hand of Fatima symbol in Part II, foreshadowing Safiya and Jawad’s past connection. Safiya notices the keychain on Jawad’s body and, in his own section, Jawad explains that he’d “died clutching my keychain. That silver hand of Fatima I’d held on to for so many years and always had with me” (22). Both characters highlight the keychain, suggesting to the reader that the keychain holds spiritual significance to both from a time before the events of the novel. 

The final chapter of Part II introduces the novel’s antagonist, Ghost Skin. The author presents Ghost Skin as a direct antagonist to Safiya; he hacks her column and specifically crosses her name out in the byline. The author implies that Ghost Skin is Jawad’s killer by showing the reader text messages that Jawad received before his death, which use the same Nietzschean quotes that Ghost Skin references in his article. In an example of dramatic irony, Ahmed lets the reader in on an important story connection before the protagonist is aware of it. By the end of Part II, the author has introduced the protagonists, antagonists, and core question of the novel: who killed Jawad Ali?