Hollow Fires

Dr. Hardy suspends Safiya for a day and a half. The morning after the graffiti and Safiya’s column, Safiya gets a text message from Asma with a picture of flyers that have been posted all over school. The flier is a print-out of Safiya’s column with the phrase “Swallow your poison, for you need it badly” written across the front (86). Shaken up, Safiya glances at the Amber Alert on her phone and “[feels] a gust of wind inside the store and [...] a single voice. A whisper” (87).

Jawad is a memory, a ghost. He laments that he has no future now, but he believes Safiya can help him find peace. He says, “[...] she’s the only one who can hear me, and she may be the only chance at a now that I have left” (89).

Safiya works at her parents’s store throughout the day. That afternoon, her father says he is going out with a search party to look for Jawad. Safiya wants to go, but her parents don’t think it’s safe. Richard arrives at the store to surprise Safiya with make-up work from school and a garbage cookie from the local bake shop, Medici. While Richard charms Safiya’s mom, Safiya gets a text from an unknown number: “SWALLOW YOUR POISON” (97). Safiya shows the text to Richard and shares her suspicions about Ghost Skin. Richard puts his number in Safiya’s phone and sends her a flirty text, “so you’d get a funny text today too” (99). Safiya decides not to go to the police about the text, and pins Richard’s text instead.

Another news article provides the public with an overview of Jawad’s last whereabouts, including the black or blue sedan he got into on the day of disappearance. According to the article, Jawad is of Iraqi descent, 5’6” tall with wavy hair and brown eyes. Jawad’s parents are cited as Iraqi refugees and are offering the $30,000 ransom that the kidnapper did not take as a reward for any information about Jawad’s location.

Jawad remembers asking his mother about ghosts before his death. She tells Jawad that Muslims don’t have the same beliefs about ghosts as Westerners, who see ghosts as scary. Jawad imagines himself as a memory, rather than a ghost, like his mom’s incense “slipping through cracks, filling a space, a whiff, then nothing” (104).

In the transcript of an in-world, right-wing radio show discussing the Jawad Ali case three days after his disappearance, the host does not believe that Jawad’s parents are telling the truth and claims that the jet pack costume was hyper-realistic. He says Jawad’s English teacher was right to call the police. The host’s theory is that Jawad’s parents are Iraqi military agents using their son to infiltrate American schools for attention, “to get sympathy and money from the libs [liberals]” (106). He refuses to acknowledge Jawad and his family’s American citizenship, saying, “That kid is probably hiding out somewhere in some fancy hotel room paid for by some sheik or empire or what have you. Trying to play Americans for fools again” (107).

Safiya returns to school the following Monday from her suspension and tells Asma about the threatening text and her ongoing flirtation with Richard. Asma warns her that Richard has slept around with other girls at the school and to be careful going too far with him. Asma agrees with Safiya’s decision not to tell her parents about the texts given the ongoing search for Jawad. Safiya goes to meet Dr. Hardy in his office, and he tells her that he called Northwestern to relay her suspension. Safiya is concerned that she may have jeopardized her scholarship, but she pushes back against Dr. Hardy’s continued attempts to censor her investigation into Ghost Skin. Dr. Hardy assigns her to regular detention in the school library.

Jawad recounts a day not long after he returned to school from his Bomb Boy arrest where he found a poem by Hafez slipped into his locker: “I wish I could show you, when you are lonely/ or in darkness, / the astonishing light of your own being” (115). It was signed by his teacher, Ms. Ellis. Jawad wonders if the poem is still stuck between the pages of his textbook where he left it.

Safiya asks Ms. Ellis to describe the day Jawad was arrested. Ms. Ellis laments that Jawad was treated like a criminal, even after he’d been cleared of the bomb threat charges. She wishes more people had stood up for him when he was alive, referencing an interview Jawad gave where he pleaded: “And I thought, why won’t someone help me? Please, someone help me” (119).

Safiya’s current events teacher, Mr. Terkel, uses her article as the basis for class discussion, focusing on key phrases that Ghost Skin used in the text, such as “This school is where free speech goes to die” (123). Rachel accuses Ghost Skin of racist, antisemitic, and white nationalist beliefs and Nate—the alderman’s son, and famous amateur bird-watcher—confronts Rachel. He agrees with Ghost Skin that the students at DuSable aren’t allowed to speak freely. Safiya challenges Nate on the difference between hate speech and free speech, and Nate calls her un-American. As the class debate continues, Nate whispers, “God is dead” under his breath to his friend, Joel (125).

A magazine article catalogues the ways extremist, white supremacist, hate groups use online recruitment to target young, white males for their causes by playing on their shame and fear. The article references an 18-year-old male, James Kyle, who had been radicalized by several hate-based online forums and went to a Muslim vigil with the intention of instigating a mass shooting. The author of the article encourages parents to monitor their children’s online activity for red flags.

Jawad admits that he got into the car with the white men who became his murderers because he assumed that rich, white people had no reason to commit a crime and could therefore be trusted.

Safiya tells Asma that she believes Nate might be connected to the swastika and the Ghost Skin hack because the quote he used in class (“God is dead”) is a quote from Nietzsche just like “Swallow your poison” (136). The threatening letter sent to Safiya’s mosque from London over Winter Break also uses Nietzschean quotes. Asma encourages Safiya to go to the police, but Safiya doesn’t think they will believe her without more evidence. Asma eventually convinces Safiya to leave an anonymous tip on the police website. Asma warns Safiya to be more careful in her research, and Safiya hears the ghostly whisper and smells the incense once again as she leaves the library.

Jawad remembers a white woman, a regular customer at his parents’s shop, who used to say, “Hindsight is 20/20!” when she made a mistake or forgot something important (140). When confronted by the police after his arrest, Jawad tried to use this phrase to diffuse the tension. Now, he thinks about it when he remembers that he got into a car with strangers the day of his murder.

Safiya does not sleep well because she keeps hearing the voice, which the reader knows is Jawad’s ghost. Safiya asks her mother if she believes in ghosts, and her mother tells her two stories: one, a ghost story about a failed love in India during World War I, the second, a story about Safiya’s great uncle. Safiya’s mom had woken up in the middle of the night at the same time the great-uncle had died. He had been writing a letter to Safiya’ mom when it happened. Safiya decides not to tell her mom about the voice she’s been hearing. At school, Safiya proposes a spread in the school paper about Jawad’s kidnapping, and the staff decides to pursue it, even though they are certain Dr. Hardy won’t approve.

Jawad recounts the moment of his death. He was hit over the head in the car, then a cloth was held to his mouth until he stopped breathing. His last thoughts were of home and his final words were, “Help me” (152).

Safiya, Usman, Rachel, and Asma meet up outside of the school to discuss their current investigation into Jawad’s disappearance. Usman plans to interview Jawad’s parents after school; Rachel has talked to the police about kidnapping statistics and found out that Nate was in London over Winter Break. Richard interrupts their meeting to talk to Safiya, and speaks sympathetically about Jawad’s disappearance. Richard and the other athletes at DuSable Prep knew Jawad from a tutoring program where they all volunteered at Jawad’s high school.

Usman interviews Jawad’s parents, who reveal that they’ve also received threatening messages with Nietzschean quotes since Jawad’s disappearance.

Richard walks Safiya home and asks her to the Winter Ball. Safiya says yes, but before they can continue talking, she gets a text from Usman. Usman tells Safiya about the threatening text the Alis received, and that it is also a Nietzschean quote: “Dead are all gods [...] now we want the supermen to live” (168).