The birth of a novel

There seems to be a perception that writers are solitary creatures. Yet the creation of this blog proves otherwise.

When the beta version went up and I looked at the map to see if it was registering my friends who were helping me, I was struck by how global my friendships truly are. The little dots leapfrogged the world as people came to look and advise.

The book itself grew out of the generosity of others. I discovered Tahir Shah’s books some years ago. After reading his addictive stories of travel and adventure, I dared to e-mail him in Morocco and ask questions. Somewhat bemused by this strange woman he’d never met before, he patiently sent me a list of his grandmother’s books, his grandfather’s books, his sister’s book – Dear Lord, did the whole family write? He warned me many of the oldest books would be out of print. Content, I went away with my list, bought what I could and discovered the inter library loan system.

Imagine if you will, the looks on my poor librarians’ faces as I began requesting books from the 1930s pertaining to Afghanistan and the Middle East. This was shortly after 911 and loads of books with Islamic titles were suddenly flooding into a north Florida library, deep in the Bible Belt. Suggestions were made, only partially in jest, that my name and research habits were probably appearing on a list somewhere.

I was curious about people and places and things that were in the news. I knew, thanks to an itinerant childhood and my own military service, that people are inherently the same. They might wear unfamiliar clothes or speak an unfamiliar language, but everyone wants the same things. A safe place to raise their children, enough food to eat, a roof over their heads, clean clothes, fresh water. And I grew curious. I wanted, no, I had to know.

What would it be like to spend an entire adult lifetime in a country at war? To have only childhood memories of peace and security? I kept reading. And wondering.

Then, late one night, I was cruising the internet and found a picture of an Afghan man. Tired, thin, with eyes that said he’d seen too much. Handsome, beard carefully combed and trimmed, weapon polished, showing such a core of strength that it haunts me to this day. And my book was born.

I had my hero’s face in my mind and the character was suddenly there. I was able to sit down and write his biography. How old he was, what he would have seen in his life, what would drive him. Imperfect and human. I sat down and wrote my opening scene, right then and there. My hero was hungry. Lonely. Tired. The product of thirty years of upheaval. The child of a Russian invader, a Shi’a in a mostly Sunni country, a survivor in every sense of the word. I had to give him a woman strong enough and traveled enough and compassionate enough to see the man behind the differences. So I gave him an American officer to love. In spite of himself. And thus my book was born.