Category: personal

I’ve always been amused by the prevailing idea in our culture that writers are anti-social creatures, people who would rather spend time alone in a room than have to speak to other sentient beings. The writers I’ve met come in all types, of course, but very few have really fit this cliché. In fact, I’ve noticed that whenever they are thrown together at a conference, a festival, or some other literary event, writers don’t mind gathering, late into the night, to talk. I rarely ever take part in these late-night chats, simply because I can’t handle them. I sleep, on average, between nine and ten hours a night. I can function on eight hours, if I have to. But if I’m forced, by circumstance, to get by with seven hours, I’m nearly useless.

When I was in Indiana last week, for instance, all the invited writers and artists wanted to go have drinks. It was almost midnight. I excused myself because I could barely think, let alone talk. They insisted. Why, they asked, could I not come just for a bit? I said I had to go to bed. Which, of course, sounded like the lamest, most ridiculous excuse to their ears. They looked at me sideways. I imagine they thought I was being standoffish. But, really, I was just exhausted, and already counting how many hours of sleep I could get. And the morning after? I was the last one to get up.

When I was an undergraduate at University Mohammed-V, I used to find all my English-language books at the aptly named English Bookshop in downtown Rabat. The store was so tiny that the aisles only fit one person at a time. The shelves were stacked high, and you had to get a ladder to reach the top one. The books were ordered in sometimes surprising, but ultimately perfectly sensible ways. I remember the hours and hours spent browsing the shelves, looking for something I could read in my new, halting language.

I went back there last summer, for a visit, and was amazed that nothing had changed. The owner was there, and we chatted for a while about the old days. I know it sounds terribly cliché, but I would never have thought that some day my books would be sold there. (And I couldn’t have thought that not just because the idea of being published was so remote, but because back then I wasn’t even writing fiction in English yet.) The physical experience of browsing through a store—finding new, used, and even out-of-print books side by side—is one that I miss, particularly now that so many independent bookstores have closed.

I am in Indiana today, giving a talk at Notre Dame University. I don’t know if there are any readers of the blog in the area, but here are the details in case any of you are interested.

My trip over here was pleasantly uneventful, until the very end. A soldier who was returning home from Iraq was on the plane to South Bend. When we arrived, her little boy, no more than five or six, ran to greet her and wouldn’t let go. Everyone was staring. There wasn’t a dry eye in sight. I was happy to see her reunited with her family, but angered once again that she and so many others are fighting in this immoral, unjust war, which has brought only misery to the people of Iraq and the United States.

I’m thrilled to let you all know that I have a short story in Dinarzad’s Children, an anthology of Arab American writing edited by Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa. The story is called “How I Became My Mother’s Daughter,” and almost everyone who has read it has mistaken it for an essay. It isn’t; it’s fiction. But this is what I get for writing in the first-person point of view.

At any rate, I hope you’ll look for this anthology in your neighborhood bookstore or library because it’s got some great writing by Rabih Alameddine, Rawi Hage, Laila Halaby, Alia Yunis, Diana Abu Jaber, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Yussef El Guindi, and the lovely and amazing Randa Jarrar, among many others.

This month marks the eighth anniversary of my blog. The site has gone from an anonymous, sporadically updated, somewhat personal diary to an eponymous record of my literary, cultural, and political interests. But lately you may have noticed, dear reader, that I remain silent for several days on end and that my posts have become shorter. I think the reason for this is that I’ve changed my writing routine quite drastically. I used to write in the afternoon, after I’d read the day’s news, answered my emails, attended to any deadlines, and updated my blog. I figured I had to get all of the distractions out of the way so I could focus on my writing. Sometime last year, however, I realized that I could never ever catch up with email and that, in fact, the more prompt I was at answering email, the more of it I received. So I’ve been writing first thing in the morning, which means that everything else is pushed back to later in the day. Especially now that I’ve started work on my new novel. Still, I love having a place in which I can post commentary on things that interest me so this blog is not going anywhere anytime soon.

I will be reading from my novel Secret Son in San Diego this week. Here are the details:

October 28, 2009
4:30 PM
Reading from Secret Son
Department of Literature
University of California San Diego
San Diego, California

I hope to see you there!