57 pages • 1 hour read
Hollow Fires
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Character Analysis
Safiya Mirza
Hollow Fires is told as a frame story, where the present day takes place in May 2023 when protagonist Safiya Mirza is a sophomore studying journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. The past takes place January 2022 when Safiya was a senior in high school at DuSable Prep in Chicago.
Safiya Mirza is an American whose family is from India. Her parents own and operate Mirza Emporium, a store that sells a variety of spices, teas, and other items. In January 2022, she is the editor-in-chief of the DuSable Spectator and preparing to study journalism at Northwestern. Safiya writes a regular column for the paper titled “Be the Change” where she challenges her wealthy, privileged classmates to fight for social justice. Safiya cares deeply about the injustice she sees in her community: anti-Muslim rhetoric, white supremacy in the American government, missing children whose cases go unsolved because they come from marginalized communities.
Safiya embodies the narrative’s central message: Young people can use their voices to fight and win against oppressive systems. She never wavers in her commitment to this theme over the course of the story, and finds herself fundamentally in conflict with those in the world around her who don’t yet understand this truth. Safiya and her friend Asma utilize online platforms and social media strategies to raise awareness and fight for justice in Jawad’s case, highlighting the ways Internet Media Empowers Youth Activism.
Throughout the novel, Ahmed presents Safiya as determined, passionate, and relentless in her pursuit of justice. When Safiya first learns of Jawad’s disappearance, she wants to join the search party, but her dad won’t allow it. Instead, she leads the staff of the DuSable Spectator in an investigation that connects Jawad’s disappearance with several hate crimes around Chicago: a threatening letter sent to her mosque, a swastika drawn on school campus, and a hacker who posted a manifesto on the school newspaper’s website. Even though Safiya knows that her principal will not sanction the investigation, she perseveres: “Ask for forgiveness, not permission - we’d seen so many examples in history class where that was the only way things got done [...] ‘We can’t let Jawad be forgotten’” (150). Safiya works with her friends to find leads, investigate suspects, and she eventually follows the voice of Jawad’s ghost that she hears in her head, leading her to the scene of the crime. Her anonymous work with #JusticeforJawad online leads to the arrest of Jawad’s killers, Nate, and Richard, who are ultimately charged and sentenced. At the end of the novel, Safiya is even more confident in her decision to speak out for Jawad and for others like him.
Jawad Ali
Jawad Ali, a 14-year-old boy American boy, moved to the United States from Iraq with his family when he was three. In Ahmed’s novel he provides a deeply personal example of the Effects of Islamophobia on Individuals and Communities through his intimate reflections on the events that lead to his murder. Jawad narrates portions of Hollow Fires as a ghost, guiding Safiya as she investigates his murder. He was a member of the makerspace club at his school, Bethune High, and loved to tinker and invent. In October 2021, he made a jet pack costume out of recycled materials as part of a makerspace club activity and decided to wear it to school. His English teacher assumed it was a bomb and called the police. Jawad was arrested, then acquitted, but still suspended by the school. For the next three months, he couldn’t participate in the makerspace club anymore and everyone at school called him Bomb Boy. On January 6th, 2022, Nate and Richard offered to give Jawad a ride home from school, killed him, and left his body in Jefferson Park.
As a ghost, Jawad whispers warnings and clues to Safiya that guide her to his body and help her escape when Nate and Richard try to hurt her. Jawad sees Safiya as a person he can turn to for help because of a connection from their past—Safiya once gave Jawad a keychain with a symbol of protection—the hand of Fatima. Years later, Jawad still wears the keychain on his belt loop, and Safiya notices it when she finds his body.
For the 16 months after his death, Jawad’s spirit is restless, unable to move on. After the verdict, when Nate and Richard are charged and convicted, Jawad “[hears] the quiet prayers. The end [is] right there. A rest, at last, after all the wandering” (385). Safiya’s relentless pursuit of justice brings peace to Jawad’s spirit.
Richard Reynolds
Richard Reynolds is the one of the two murderers of Jawad Ali—Ahmed’s characterization of both Richard and his accomplice, Nate, emphasizes the privilege afforded to them as wealthy, white males in the world of the story, highlighting The Intersection of Wealth and Race in America. In 2022, Richard is a senior at DuSable Prep and the captain of both the swim and lacrosse teams. At the start of the novel, he presents himself as a kind-hearted person interested in dating Safiya Mirza, who finds him handsome with “his pale-blue eyes sparkling in the winter sun” (28). On January 3, 2022, he seeks out Safiya before the start of the Spring semester to talk about their winter breaks, claiming that he spent time watching Safiya’s movie recommendations. He continues to shower her with positive attention, stopping by the store to bring her favorite cookies, offering to walk her home, inviting her to go to the Winter Ball, and listening to her as she works on Jawad’s investigation. Safiya doesn’t suspect Richard’s motives until Dakota, Richard’s former girlfriend, mentions that he’d been in London over Winter Break—the place from which the threatening letter to Safiya’s mosque had been mailed.
Richard continues his friendly disposition towards Safiya, but as she starts to suspect him and withhold information from him, he becomes more possessive and intrusive, beginning to show his true character. Richard corners Safiya, intending to kill her, but Safiya escapes, and Richard is arrested. Throughout his trial, all of Richards previously attentive and caring artifice drops away—he double crosses Nate during their interrogations and shows no remorse during the trial. He also supposedly demands better accommodations while in jail. The only time Safiya notices a trace of fear in Richard is when he is charged and sentenced. The author does not include any suggestion that Richard grows or changes over the course of the novel, and his deception is a core piece of Safiya’s conflict throughout the story.
Nate Chase
In 2022, Nate Chase, Richard’s accomplice in the murder of Jawad Ali, is a senior at DuSable Prep and runs an incredibly successful birding YouTube Channel called Fowl Play. His father is an alderman on the Chicago City Council and their family is wealthy. Nate is a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophies, particularly “the superman,” and uses Nietzschean references to threaten Safiya’s mosque, Jawad and his family, and Safiya herself. His journal entries describing Jawad’s murder and the plan to hurt Safiya are part of the prosecution’s evidence against him in his trial.
In contrast to Richard, the author positions Nate as an antagonist from the beginning of the novel. He and Safiya both take a current events course together at DuSable and he overtly supports the views of Ghost Skin, the hacker who posted a racist manifesto on the Spectator’s website, that “some speech is protected at this school, and some isn’t” (125). Nate believes that only politically correct speech is protected, and that conservative, nihilist, or anti-government speech is censored. When he confronts Safiya about the hack in class, he says, “By the way, censoring people is totally un-American”—a loaded comment that implies Safiya, an Indian American, is not American enough (125). At the end of the conversation, Nate quotes Nietzsche: “‘God is dead’” (125). Safiya connects his Nietzschean quote and his ideology to the mosque letter sent from London, the threatening texts Jawad received before his death, and the text Safiya receives once she starts investigating. For much of the novel, Nate is Safiya’s primary suspect, which is confirmed when she finds the missing page of the school’s lone book by Nietzsche in Nate’s locker. Nate physically threatens Safiya but is pushed away by Richard Reynolds. Though it appears Richard and Nate are enemies, it is revealed later that the two worked together to target the mosque, Jawad, and Safiya.
When Nate is arrested, he believes he will not face consequences because of his privilege, his father’s position as an alderman, and his family’s influential status in Chicago. Nate shows no remorse for killing Jawad, and he confesses to the murder on the stand. The excerpts of news articles and alt-right media coverage that Ahmed intersperses in her narrative paint both Nate and Richard as victims, citing their good looks and wealthy families as points in favor of their innocence. The groundswell of public support this coverage cultivates among predominantly white viewership alongside the overt vilification of Jawad after his arrest both underscore the novel’s exploration of The Power of Journalism and the Court of Public Opinion.
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