Characters I used to live with + mounting political instability in Bangladesh
Author Abroad S1:E11
Greetings from Paris, France, where I’m visiting my daughter and taking a little breather from polluted Dhaka.😮💨 This is Author Abroad, a newsletter on reading, writing, and reflections from a life abroad. In this latest edition, I reflect on when a novel ceases to belong to its author, mounting political instability in Bangladesh, and some of the books I read this month.
Writing
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of Bangladeshi and North American women in Dhaka to discuss The Golden Land. While I’ve done many book launch events and podcast interviews over the past year, this experience was unique in that it was the first time I’ve sat down with a group of readers to talk mainly about the story, as opposed to the writing process or inspiration for the novel.
Hearing readers talk about Etta, Jason, Shwe, and Parker as if they were real people was an extraordinary experience. I felt somehow removed from the discussion, as if these women knew the characters better than I did—or at least had a different relationship with them than I did, which I suppose is true. It’s often said that once published, a novel ceases to belong to the author. Out in the world, it merges with the life experiences of readers to take on new meaning that the author may or may not have been conscious of while writing. I don’t think I fully understood this until now.
Several years ago in Myanmar, I had the opportunity to meet Karen Connelly, author of The Lizard Cage, an exceptional novel about a Burmese man in solitary confinement in the notorious Insein prison of Yangon. One of the members of my Yangon book club arranged the get-together with Karen at a local restaurant owned by the son of another member. What I remember most from that evening is seeing her turn a copy of her book over in her hands, and with a look of awe on her face, say under her breath, “I can’t believe I wrote this.” Watching Karen in that moment made a strong impression on me. Fully immersed as I was in the writing of The Golden Land, I thought about my characters all the time—when I was in the shower, when I was driving my kids to school, when I was falling asleep at night. How could she not believe she wrote The Lizard Cage???
I think I understand now. There’s something that happens when you write fiction that’s hard to express without coming across as overly cryptic: you become so immersed in the story that it no longer seems to come from you. Or perhaps more accurately, it comes from a part of you that you’re not aware of. As I sat with this group of women in Dhaka, I was reminded of Karen Connelly’s reaction to her book that night in Yangon. Although the characters in The Golden Land came from somewhere inside me, I no longer think about them all the time the way a reader might. The novel has taken on a life of its own.
Life abroad
Bangladesh is known as the land of six seasons: summer, rainy season, early autumn, late autumn, winter, and spring. Each season lasts two months and begins around the 15th of the Western calendar month, which means we’re now halfway through late autumn. The monsoon period spans nearly half the year, so the rains begin in summer and continue through early autumn. What all this means for me and the 26 million other residents of Dhaka is that the rain and humidity have finally come to an end, and the temperature is much more comfortable (yay🥳). On the flip side, with no rain to clean the air, the PM2.5 (aka, fine particulate matter or pollution) has been creeping steadily upward. On the day we left for Paris, the air-quality index was “Very Unhealthy” approaching “Hazardous.”
Another challenge to life in Bangladesh these days is mounting political instability in the lead up to the January 7, 2024 general election. Frustrated by the ruling party Awami League’s control over, and therefore likely victory in, the upcoming election, a coalition of opposition parties have called for a number of countrywide hartals (strikes) and oborodhs (blockades). Their aim is to pressure the ruling party to release detained opposition leaders and install a nonpartisan caretaker government to oversee the election process as has traditionally been done in the past. During a strike, everything remains closed, and anyone venturing into certain areas risks getting caught in protest rallies. During a blockade, businesses may remain open if they choose, but any vehicles on the roads, railways, or waterways are at risk of attack. It is still possible to walk or take a bicycle rickshaw, though we are advised to stay in safe areas and avoid locations where clashes are likely to erupt.
Of the 14 working days since the first strike was called on October 29th, there have been only four days with no strike or blockade. To cope with the situation, many offices are working remotely, and schools are holding classes on weekends. During this two and a half week period, over 9000 opposition activists have been arrested, 150 arson attacks committed (including 94 buses torched), and 214 military platoons deployed. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League call the opposition parties terrorists and arsonists, while supporters of the opposition claim that strikes and blockades are their only recourse in an increasingly authoritarian atmosphere. From what I’ve seen, there is no longer any discussion of political issues or party platforms. I hope the stalemate will soon come to an end and that whichever party is elected in January will address the many issues Bangladeshi people face, including the two I often talk about in this newsletter: curbing violence against women and getting pollution under control.
Reading
When the Apricots Bloom: A Novel by Gina Wilkinson, audiobook narrated by Raghad Chaar (Kensington, 2021)
Set in Baghdad in 2002, When the Apricots Bloom is a braided narrative of three women living under Sadaam Hussein’s authoritarian regime in Iraq: Huda, who works at the Australian embassy and is forced to become an informant for the dreaded mukhabarat (secret police); Rania, an impoverished artist who is the daughter of a sheikh and estranged childhood friend of Huda; and Ally, the half-Australian half-American wife of an Australian diplomat seeking information about her own mother’s time in Baghdad thirty years earlier. As the three women’s lives become increasingly entangled, they struggle to contain their secrets and lies both from the mukhabarat and from each other. This compelling and suspenseful novel asks how much we are willing to compromise our values in order to protect the people we love. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about Iraq in the process.
Tom Lake: A Novel by Ann Patchett (Harper, 2023) audiobook narrated by Meryl Streep
What a treat to listen to Meryl Streep narrate this gorgeous novel! Tom Lake is the story of a woman named Lara, who is persuaded by her three adult daughters to recount the brief but dramatic love affair she had with a famous actor when she was in her twenties. The modern-day narrative is set on a cherry orchard in northern Michigan during the 2020 Covid lockdown, while the earlier narrative follows young Lara in the 1980s from New Hampshire to LA to the eponymous Tom Lake, a summer theater company in Michigan. Tom Lake: A Novel is a beautiful meditation on mothers and daughters as well as an exploration of how the past shapes our lives, often in ways we don’t expect. Highly recommended.
The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak (Penguin Books, 2011)
This fascinating novel within a novel was recommended to me by a fellow writer in Bangladesh. The outer story follows the spiritual transformation of Ella, a lonely, unfulfilled housewife from Massachusetts who begins a correspondence with a modern-day mystic named Aziz while reading his novel, called “Sweet Blasphemy.” The embedded story of “Sweet Blasphemy” is a fictionalized version of the mid-13th century relationship between the famous poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, the wandering dervish who helped transform Rumi from scholar to poet and aesthetic. I knew very little about Rumi, Shams of Tabriz, or Sufism, and found this aspect of the novel quite illuminating. I was less enthusiastic about how many points of view there were—in addition to Ella, there are chapters from the point of view of Rumi, Shams, several members of Rumi’s family, and multiple townspeople! Nevertheless, the novel has an interesting structure and was a great way to learn more about Sufism.
That’s it for this month. Let me know what you think of Author Abroad. I always love hearing from you!
💕Liz