Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits | Laila Lalami | Talks at Google

Okay, welcome to Authors at Google, everyone. And welcome to our YouTube viewers as well. I wanted to introduce our guest today, Leila Lalami, who is going to talk about her fiction book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. And just a quick background on Leila. She was born and raised in Morocco. She earned her bachelor's degree in English from the University Mohammed V in Rabat, her master's degree from University College London, and her doctorate in linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She's the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Grant, a Fletcher Pratt Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her debut book, which she'll be talking about today, hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2006, and she is a Los Angeles resident. Everyone, please welcome Leila Lalami.

So thank you all for coming. It's really a delight to be here. And thank you, Chris, for that lovely introduction. So, as Chris mentioned, I was born and raised in Morocco, and Morocco is one of those places that you probably hear about through the travel section of your newspaper that you get online. So you hear about sandy beaches and deserts and camels and whatnot. Or occasionally you might hear about Morocco through the front page section of your newspaper, as happened, for example, when a group of Moroccans blew up bombs on the Madrid trains in 2004. So between tourism and terrorism, there's a whole complex reality that happens. And I was actually, I was born in a very, I suppose, very average family. My father is an engineer and my mother was a homemaker, and it was a lower middle class family. But my parents really, really loved to read. In fact, one of my earliest memories is sitting in our living room and having my father in one corner with his book and my mother in the other corner with her book. My father loved to read comic books. He used to love comic books. He read mysteries, crime, adventure novels, some literary fiction. And my mother, on the other hand, loved to read memoirs. That was her thing, true stories. So from a very early age, I did the same thing. I picked up a book and I started reading. Now, this was Morocco in the 1970s, so there was very little children's literature available in our native language, which is Arabic. Most of what was available on the marketplace at that time was French, despite the fact that Morocco had been independent by that point for a good 20 years. So, you know, I was weaned on Asterix and Aubeniques and Tantin and the Three Musketeers and Capitan Fakasse and all these French books when I was a child. So my earliest exposures to literature was in this foreign language. And it wasn't until I was about 13 that I came across books written by Moroccans, for Moroccans. So I remember very clearly the first time that I read who just passed away last year, Tahar Benjalun, Layla Abu Zayd and people like that. And at that time, then I started reading more adult literature. And then it was fine. There was plenty that was available in both languages. But. But as I said, my earliest exposure was really in French. And even at school, I received this semicolonial education. It was drilled into us that you needed to learn French in order to succeed. If you wanted to go and study engineering or medicine or any of these technical fields, then you had to really, really be proficient in French, because at universities, these topics were taught in French, I think. So, you know, so life went on, and I continued reading, and I started writing when I was about 9 or 10. Unsurprisingly, I wrote in French. And unsurprisingly, the kinds of stories that I wrote might have taken place in France, you know, because of that early exposure. And then I went to my first English class was when I was 15. I was in high school. And I remember we couldn't get over the fact that in English, you say, it's a beautiful day, isn't it? And we couldn't understand, what is this? Isn't it at the end of the sentence, this tag? It seemed so exotic and strange, but. So I ended up choosing English as my major in college. And then I went to do a master's in London, and then I came to the United States to go to graduate school. And at that time, I literally became immersed in the English language in a way that obviously school in Morocco hadn't provided, Right? So, you know, every moment of every day, I had to use the English language. And so even to write my papers for school and all of that. So when I started trying to go back to writing these stories that I was writing, I found that it was becoming a little bit more difficult. And I started to sort of reflect about my choice to write in French and what it really meant. And it was really a realization that in Sherman and Lexie's words, I was in the reservation of my mind. You know, Sherman Alexie has this wonderful phrase that, you know, he had been stuck in the reservation of his mind. And then finally the process of writing sort of freed him of that. And in a way, I really felt the same way. And I started going back over the act of writing in French and it just stopped being satisfying. So I thought, well, I'll try my hand at writing in English, since I'm so clearly incapable of writing in literary Arabic. Now, Arabic is a language that is in a state of what's called diglossia. There is a high form, which is what you use for newspapers and for literature and for sermons, and then there's the vernacular, which is what you actually use every day. And so of course I'm provisioned in the vernacular. But as I said, because of the education that I received, my literary Arabic is not very good. So I thought, well, I'll try my hand at writing in English. So I did that. And I found that the process actually has been very satisfying, primarily because I feel that it has freed me from the colonial baggage that inevitably comes with the use of French, at least me. And it also, in a way, I think, gives me some distance with respect to the kinds of stories that I'm writing, particularly since I don't live in Morocco, I live here. And so there is always that risk of writing with nostalgia about one's homeland or one's home country and sort of gloss over certain things. And I feel that writing in English kind of forces me to take a step back. So there's perhaps a bit more distance, a bit more objectivity in. In writing these stories. So this brings me to this book. This is my first published book anyway, and it's called Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. And I suppose, unsurprisingly for an immigrant, this is a book about immigration. It's about a group of Moroccans who cross the Straits of Gibraltar on a lifeboat. There are four main characters. There is a young out of work mechanic named Aziz. There is a young mother who wants to run away from her husband and join her brothers in France. There is Fatin, who's a religious student on the run from the law. And lastly there's Murad, who is an unemployed university graduate. And the book essentially starts in Mediaras. In the middle of the story, we're on the boat with these four main characters as they make this journey from Morocco to Spain. Now, at the narrowest point, the Straits of Gibraltar are only about eight miles wild. I mean, you can stand in Tangiers on any clear day and actually see across the Mediterranean to the Spanish side. So Europe is very much this. Europe is ever present in people's lives in Tangiers, it's something that you can almost touch, but not quite. And given all the problems that are facing modern Morocco, particularly unemployment, there's been this wave of. There's been a wave of immigration. And now that there are all these visas that have been imposed and really tight restrictions on immigration, illegal immigration has taken on larger proportions. In the past, Europe used to welcome having all these workers come, particularly after the Second World War, to rebuild and all of that. So up until the early 80s, you didn't even need a visa to go to Europe. It was just something that was. A lot of people went and worked in the summer, came back. So that was sort of. That's how things were back then. But then by the 80s, Europe decided it had had enough for the most part, so particularly in France, so it imposed visas. And that's when we saw this wave of illegal immigration. And the characters in this book, like many other people, use boats to cross the Mediterranean to go to Spain and from there to the rest of Europe. So, as I said, there are these four main characters and. And I'm going to read just from the middle of the book. The way that the book is structured is that we start the story on the boat with these characters, but then we have an extended flashback and we get to see. To meet each of these characters individually and get to see their lives before they make the decision to immigrate. And then eventually we flash forward and we get to see who actually made it to Spain, who realized their dream of immigration, and who found just another nightmare waiting for them on the other side. So this is from a piece called Better Luck Tomorrow. So this happens before Murat decides to go to Europe. When the afternoon ferry let out the tourists in Tangier, the guides swooped down on them. They darted from one passenger to the next, offering tours of the medinas and the museums, the palaces and the bazaars. But Murad Idrisi had a different approach. This was his line, interested in pole balls. And it usually worked, especially with the hippie types. Even though the writer had died a few months ago, Murad could still take the tourists to the houses where he had lived, the cafes he'd gone to, the places where he'd bought his kief. These days, though, the guides outnumbered the tourists, and Murad found little work. He watched carefully as passengers got off the Spanish ferry before he set his sights on a couple. The woman wore a T shirt and cargo pants. Her companion was in a baseball cap and green shorts. The backpacks they carried gave them a forward leaning gait, but they walked swiftly on the dock. They seemed to be in their late 20s, which wasn't Murad's preferred age range for that line. It usually worked better with older people. Still, he figured they were British or American and would be familiar with bulls. And the way things had been lately, he couldn't afford to be picky. They avoided eye contact when he walked up to them, but he recited his line with a suave smile. Interested in pole balls. A fleeting expression of surprise lit their faces, but they stepped aside. Shit, Maybe they were an American. Habla en espanol? Murad asked. No answer. Another guide slipped between Murad and the tourists. Present Z Deutsch? He asked. Murad shot the guy a look that said, I saw them first. Get the hell away from them. The couple walked on, so Murad followed. In the mesh pocket of the woman backpack, he saw a book. He craned his neck sideways to read the title. Backpacking in Morocco. So he was right. They were probably English. Years ago, when he was still studying for his bachelor's in English, he would go to the American Language center on Sankat Ibnaz and sit in the library and read all the books he could get his hands on. He loved reading, loved the feel of the paper under his fingers, the way the words rolled off his tongue, how they made him discover things he didn't know about himself. Murad caught up to the couple at the entrance of the ferry terminal. He willed his voice to ring with confidence as he said, my name is Murad. Welcome to Morocco. Would you like to visit Po Bols House? No thanks, the woman said. An answer at last. There was hope yet. So they weren't interested in Bols. Well, Murad didn't care much for him either. Do you want to see Barbara Hutton's palace? He asked. Who is he talking about? The man asked. From their accent, Murad could tell that they were American, not British, as he'd assumed. The World War heirs. Jack, the woman said. Murad realized he had misjudged them. They weren't interested in 1960s Tangier, and so he had to think of something else. Taking a cue from their backpacks, he tried again. Want to see the caves of Hercules, Jack? Very, very scenic. Jack turned around so abruptly that Murad bumped into him. Look, I'm sorry, he said. We don't need a guide. Thanks anyway. Murad was impressed by how easily they navigated their way amid the crowd of 40 employees, busy pedestrians, and countless guides and vendors. Now they were already at the light with the bus station and the line of cabs just across the street. Time was running out. He stood next to them, looking them in the eye while they stared straight ahead. I can give you a tour of the medina, he said. The couple continued ignoring him. Need a hotel room? I know a place where you can get a good price. Still nothing. In desperation he whispered, you want some hashish? His voice was drowned out by the cars that went by in a cloud, cloud of black exhaust. He wasn't sure they had heard him, but when the light changed there was a slight hesitation in the woman's step. She turned for the first time to look at Murad, then Jacques grabbed her elbow. Eileen, he said. She had a broad forehead and a fair complexion, but it was her clear blue eyes that struck Murad. There was something in them that he recognized. Resignation, perhaps. They were now at the Petit Taxi station. I can get you a good price, murad said, his voice at a higher pitch than he wanted, his tone pleading despite himself. He didn't even have any drugs on him, but if they said yes, he could always get a cut from one of the dealers. Jack's hands tightened perceptibly on Eileen's elbow as he guided her to a cab and opened the door for her. Murad took a deep breath. It was over. He turned around and looked toward the dock. He considered going back, but by now all the tourists would be gone. He moved on slowly toward Bab el Bahr, the sea gate. Kicking at rocks on the road. The sole of his shoe came loose. Letting out a string of curses, he pressed the ball of his foot harder against the ground to hide the loose rubber. When he passed the Grand Mosque, he heard the muezzin call out for the late afternoon prayer. There would be no more fairies today, so I'm going to skip forward. There's some stuff that happens, And then this happens. At dusk, Murad headed to the Soco Chico. He took a small detour to avoid walking by the Al Najat building, where he'd had his only promising interview in the six years since he finished college. It took an extra five minutes, and he had to walk through a narrow street where brown water poured at a broken sewer, but it was better than seeing the employees get off work. He arrived at the Cafe la Liberte around seven and ordered a cup of coffee. It was thick and tasted like tar. It did nothing for his mood. Around him, turbaned old men smoked unfiltered cigarettes while bareheaded young ones played cards. The TV on the far wall of the cafe was showing a football match. Real Madrid was playing Barcelona. Murad watched with interest, so he didn't notice Rahal until the man sat down at the table. Rahal smiled at Murad, a smile that looked reptilian because of his large eyes set too far apart and his bald head. Murad nodded but continued watching the match. Rahal ordered mint tea and then poured it slowly, raising the teapot until foam formed in the glass. Then he leaned against the blue tiled wall. Have you thought about our conversation last week? Rahal had been hustling Murad, trying to get him to go on one of those boats to Spain, and Murad had already told him twice that he wasn't interested. The man didn't give up easily. Murad shook his head. I don't think it's a good idea. Rahal played with the sugar cube on his saucer. He turned it around and around between his fingers. Let me ask you something. How much money did you make this month? It's low season right now. Things will pick up in the summer. Rahal smiled. You can't be a guide forever. You'll never make a living on it. Murad took a sip of his coffee and continued watching the match. Great kick, he said, pointing at the screen. Barcelona will win. Rajal didn't look up at the tv. In Spain, he said, someone like you would get a job in no time. I don't know, murad said. Look, I don't usually talk about this, but I can tell. I can tell right away whether someone's going to make it or not. And you will. You. You're not like the others. Murad grinned. Did Rahad think he was going to believe that one? Suit yourself, rahel said. Go play guide. Maybe in 10 years you'll have saved enough to move out of your mother's house. Murad looked down in his cup. Yellowish foam slowly dissolved in the black coffee. How much? He asked. Dh20,000. Murad shot to his feet. Rahal grabbed his wrist and motioned to him to sit back down. If I get caught, I go to jail, rahal whispered. Murad huffed at him. How could jail scare Rahal? He'd dealt drugs in the past, and now he smuggled people to Spain because it was more profitable. Fifteen years ago, Rahal's boss had been a simple fisherman, but now he owned a fleet of these small boats, and he'd hired smugglers like Raha to work for him. What about me? Murad asked, his thumb pointed at his chest. You wouldn't go to jail. I don't have 20,000. What about your family? My father is deceased. May God have mercy on him. My mother doesn't have any money. If it weren't for my uncle and my sister, we'd be out on the street. Can't they lend you money? Not that kind of money. It's a very good price, raha said. We've never had any problems. All I can get is 8,000, Murad said, even as he wondered how he was going to convince his uncle and his sister to let him borrow the sum. Rahal chuckled. This isn't some game. We're taking a lot of risk here. He refilled his glass of tea. We have Zodiac lifeboats, not like the pateras the others use. Murad called to mind the sunken fishing boats, the Guardia Civil, stacked on the Spanish coast, plainly visible from the Moroccan side. They thought it would scare people. It didn't. And 10,000 more had said, can't do it for that little. You think 10,000 is little? I don't get all of it. I have to pay for the fuel, don't forget. And then there's the police. I have to grease them. Rahal turned the extra sugar between his fingers. With a swift movement he put it in his pocket. Let me tell you something. You know Rashid the baker? His brother went on one of our boats about eight months ago. Now he's in Barcelona and he sends his family money every month. Murad never tired of hearing stories like that. He'd heard the horror stories, too, about the drownings, the arrests, the deportations. But the only stories that were told over and over in the neighborhood were the good stories about the people who'd made it. Last year Rachid's brother had been just another unemployed youth, a kid who liked to smoke hashish and build weird looking sculptures with discarded matchboxes which he then tried to sell off as art. Look at him now. Murad took a deep breath. 12,000 and that's, he said at last. By God, I won't be able to get any more out of them. Even though Murat talked about them, he knew Lamia wouldn't give him a single real for one thing, she now had a wedding coming up. For another, he couldn't imagine asking his little sister for help. But it would be different with his uncle. He would talk to him man to man, and ask for a loan. Surely the old man wouldn't say no, not after having slighted Murad on the wedding of his sister. If you make it 20,000, I'll get you a job, guaranteed like Rashid's brother. Murad sighed. Fine, he said. But listen here, people. Back out. I don't want to waste my time. I'm not the type to back out. Raha took a sip. Good. When the time comes, we'll call you. We'll meet on the beach at Babyloud. When do we leave? When can you get me the money? Murad looked away. Soon, he said. After leaving the Cafe Laliberte, Murad headed back toward the beach. He found a spot near the Caspa where he could get a view of the Mediterranean. It was getting dark in the distance. Car lights from the Spanish side looked like so many tiny lighthouses, beacons that warned visitors to keep out. He thought about the work visas he'd asked for the last several years. Dakotas had filled quickly, and he'd been turned down. He knew in his heart that if only he could get a job, he could make it. He would be successful, like his sister was today, like his younger brothers would be someday. His mother wouldn't dream of discounting his opinion the way she did. And Spain was so close, just across the straits. He started walking through the SoCo. He saw a few tourists wandering down the market. He couldn't understand these foreigners. They could go to a nice hotel, have a clean bed, go on the beach or the pool. And here they were in the worst part of town, looking around for something exotic. He thought of talking to one or two, asking them if they needed a guide, but his heart wasn't in it anymore. The smell of grilled meat tempted him, and he stopped at a stall that made kafta and brochettes. While he waited for his order. He heard the woman speak in English, and he turned around to look. It was the one from earlier in the day. What was her name? Aileen. She held the guidebook open in one hand and pointed ahead of her with the other. I think it's that way, she said when she looked up and met his gaze. Murad wondered if she recognized him without his jalaba. She smiled. He saw the ease with which she carried herself, the nonchalance in her demeanor, free from the burden of survival, and he envied her for it. Do you know where the Cafe Centrale is? She asked. So he had been right about them after all. They'd come to Tangier looking for the beets. How easy it would be for him to insert himself off into their trip now. He could show them the cafe where Burroughs smoked Keefe, or the hotel where he wrote Naked Lunch. But he was past all that now. He was already thinking about his new beginning in a new land. He pointed down the street. This way, he said, across from the Pension Fuentes. Then he turned back to wait for his order. Thank you. So that's an excerpt from the book, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I mean, I could talk some more, but I just figured it'd be much more interesting to have a conversation rather than me lecturing. Yeah. Hi. Hi. I was really interested to hear what you were saying about the language that you write in, whether you were writing in French or in English. And I wonder how the other. How there's a wonderful sort of community of North African Francophone writers, and I think especially vascular. And just I wonder how that. How those writers sort of played into your feeling about writing in a colonialized language, or if that community felt like it was accessible or not, or how that played into that decision. Well, I definitely feel like I owe them a debt. I mean, I feel like I owe a debt to all the greats, you know, Muroot Faroun and Tahar Benjalun and Asia Jabbar and Trishrai B. And all of them, because I feel like that they paved the way. I'm thinking in particular of Drisha B's novel the Simple Past, which was published, I think, in 1954. And so it was literally at the time when Morocco was still getting its act together and having independence. So I feel like I owe them a debt because they made those characters available to someone like me. And if they hadn't paved the way, then it wouldn't have been possible for me to write if they had not been around, or at least to write the kinds of stories that I write today, let's put it that way. But I think, I mean, somebody like Asia Jabbar, for example, who's now a member of the Academie Francaise, you know, she has said many times that it was not possible for her to write in either Berber or Arabic because she had gone to France, French schools. I mean, she grew up under the occupation. So for her, using the French language in order to write these stories is a way of sort of talking back to the empire. This is sort of what Salman Rushdie talks about when he says that the empire writes back. It's essentially saying that you're not going to be silent, even if you have to use the other language in order to be able to. To write. But that's not to say that there isn't a rich literature. Like, for example, Leila Abu Zayd, who writes in Arabic, has always made the choice that she was going to write in Arabic, no matter what, she definitely has a role to play. And I'm happy to report that now she's being taught in schools. So, like all high schools in Morocco, for example, read her autobiographies, one book that they've assigned. So I definitely feel like I owe that to all those who came before. But I think that. I think that the kind of stories that I'm writing is there are a lot of other Moroccan writers who are also sort of using the languages of the countries in which they live in order to write. So in Morocco, because, as I mentioned before, there's a huge wave of immigration, both legal and illegal. And Morocco is a country that has about 30 million people, and yet we have3.3 million immigrants. I mean, 3 million people who live outside of Morocco. So this is a very huge diaspora community. And what's happened over the course of the last maybe 20 years is there's been really a development of a Moroccan literature in all these other languages. For example, there's Apolkada Ben Ali, who's Dutch, so he writes in Dutch, but his stories are often set in Morocco or among the Moroccan community in the Netherlands. So there are a lot of other people who are doing the same thing. Italian, Spanish, French, obviously. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about how you structured the book and how you came to sort of format it as a set of leaf link stories? Sure, sure. Well, this book actually started as a short story, and it literally was about this character, Murad. That's why I often like to read his chapters, because the book started as a short story about a young man, sort of like a male version of myself, really. He's a graduate with an English degree, but he can't find a job. He lives in Tangier. And so the idea sort of germinates in his mind that he's going to give immigration a try. Since everybody else seems to be trying it, he's going to try it. He's a bit naive in that way. And so the story was just about him making that crossing. But it started to have all these long flashbacks, and I started to wonder, why is it that I'm having all these flashbacks in a story that's about the actual act of immigration? And so I decided to take all of those flashbacks out of the story and just put them in a separate story. It could be just two stories about one individual at two different points in his life. So that's how it started. But then, you know, I just started working on it and revising them. And I thought, wait a minute, what about the other people who are sitting next to him? Wouldn't it be kind of cool to know what happened to each one of them? So I did all of these, and I had, like, something like 10 characters, like each one on the boat. So it was going to be kind of tied, like all the people who leave and why they're leaving. But then I kept revising the steps for about a year. I realized that it was going to be kind of a linked collection of stories. But I felt very unsatisfied, and it took me a while to realize why. And that's because I didn't have closure with each of the characters. And so I thought, you know, I really need to know what's going to happen. So I decided to just focus on the four characters that seemed the most interesting to me and then find out what happened to them. And I did this literally without any a priori. Like, I had no idea. I didn't see set out to say, okay, this one's going to make it, and this one is not going to make it. I just literally picked up the story from where I left it and followed the thread and saw whether they were going to make it or not, if you will. And I thought when I was done, I ended up with this structure where you open in the middle of the action, and then you go back and then you go forward to kind of complete, to give it a full circle. And I tried to understand why that was. And I feel like maybe it's because I'm an immigrant myself. And I feel that too much of immigrant literature focuses on a narrative of arrival. So the process of coming back, particularly in the United States. So it's the process of coming to this country and struggling and, you know, making it and, you know, the American dream and all of that. And I feel like there isn't enough focus about all the things that people leave behind, which, you know, are not. You know, you have to live with this. You know, immigration is something that sort of spread, splits your life into a before and after. And I just felt like I wanted to pay homage to that, to all the things that we do leave behind and all the people that we do leave behind. So I wanted to have a narrative of departure and a narrative of arrival. And the fact that it started with this, it's almost. To me, it works well because most of the time, when these Moroccan immigrants I heard about. They were heard about in these headlines about boats capsizing or all these horrible accidents in the Coast Guard. So that's really the headline. But then there's all the stories that lay beneath the surface. And I thought that was interesting, exploring it that way. Yeah, a lot of Catherine and Nora's story, at least the catalyst for the happens with Kevin is headcountly at practice. And I wonder if you thought about that. Yeah, it is. It's a story that gets a lot of strong reactions from a lot from very different people. It's been kind of amusing to me to watch people's. How people interpret that story and how their interpretations are. Obviously not my interpretations, but that's just how the world is. That's the beauty of books, which I think is really unique to books and probably not something that other art forms share. So, for example, if you have a painting, well, that's the painting. We all can see the colors in it. We all can see what it represents, and we can discuss different interpretations, but we can agree about what it looks like. But with books, each one of us is creating images in his or her own mind. And these images are highly intricate, individualistic, and we bring our own experiences into the book and trying to interpret it. So there are as many books as there are readers, really, for this particular book. Anyway, so with this story of the fanatic, it's. I mean, I wrote it because it was something that I'm deeply interested in. I grew up, as I said, I'm a child of the 70s, so, I mean, I grew up in Morocco at a time when, like, covering was just sort of seen as this really odd thing for somebody our age. It was something that your grandmother did, you know, it wasn't something that your mother did even, you know, or that you would do. And then something happened when I was in high school and we started seeing girls showing up in school, covering. And I remember the first time actually it happened, the girl got sent back home because it was that unusual. And so in short order, it became a phenomenon. And so to me, you know, the headscarf is just something. Or the veil, as it's incorrectly called. It's just something that. It's very complex. It's not just because people do it because they have a religious feeling, that it's a religious mandate, although that's certainly part of it. But there are many different reasons why people or women choose to cover among them, you know, making a political statement or, you know, sometimes people do it for economic reasons because they're poor. And it's much cheaper to wear that traditional religious garb than to wear Western clothes. Sometimes people do it because of peer pressure. I remember reading a story about a woman who was teaching at a small school and all the other female teachers had covered and she was the only one who didn't cover. And she got, you know, like a headscarf in her mailbox and that kind of, you know, pressure. So there's, there's a variety of reasons why for white people cover, but the fact is that there definitely has been a rise in these obvious symbols of religious affiliation. And I was interested in exploring that. It's an infinitely complex subject and I just wanted to take a look at it. So in this story, there's a young university student who is from a very modest background who covers. And there is a girl who is from sort of the upper middle class, like, you know, and has no interests in religion or anything. And they kind of meet and the sort of liberal girl decides to cover too, and her father just loses it. And so it's a story that explores why we do the kinds of things that we do. But to me, it's also a story about hypocrisy. It's a story that simply asks you whether you truly believe that whether or not you cover means that you are better or worse. So, for example, the girl who initially doesn't cover her father doesn't want her to cover because he doesn't want her to be associated with the others. He doesn't want her to be part of that, of the sort of the lower middle classes. You see, he's an upper middle class man and he's not. Daughter is going to go study in America. And so, you know, it's just unseemly for his daughter to cover and to sort of to show her affiliations in that way, in her religious affiliations. And it's a story that asks, you know, who is really, you know, a lot of people really identify with the father because he's sort of, he's not practicing and, you know, he doesn't want his daughter to cover. Which seems on the surface of it to be, oh, this is a very modern man and, you know, more power to him. But a lot of people miss that in the story. He's a guy who's very corrupt. He takes bribes. He does, you know, he flunks people. I mean, he does some pretty horrible things. But a lot of people identify with him because they're so terrified of this headscarf that they want to be on the side of the guy who's against it. So it's just, it's just Very complex. I think it's a story about hypocrisy and basically asking ourselves, you know, what it really means when a person chooses to cover and how that affects us, whether it's any of our business at the end of the day, you know, So, I mean, I remember I had this woman read my story and she's like, I don't understand, you know, so this is a metaphor for the west and the Arab world. So the west is the modern father and the. And the Arab world is that girl who covers and so why did you have to make the. Why did you have to make him the corrupt one? Is this simplistic reading that, you know, like, because he's this sort of modern man, he can't possibly have any, like, you know, he has to be absolutely perfect. So we can all the better to create a contrast with all those, you know, backward people and all that, which is ridiculous. You know, I mean, there's. To me, there's, there's a lot of good in what the fatten says. It's just that she carries it to a level where she really wants and everybody else to be like her. And that's when I, that's when I get off the bus. I just feel like it's her body. She can do whatever she wants just as long as she leaves me out of it. So that's my opinion. But that's not how everybody interprets. Everybody interprets that story differently. Anything else?

Yeah, so, I mean, these characters are bad.

Meeting.

And I'm just wondering, do you. Do you sort of consider, like, where their stories sort of go from here? Like, you know, you sort of like lay it out where you thought it's like basically going to be this one little strength about.

Right.

And I mean, is there, is there a story. I mean, I know there's a story left here, but is that something?

Well, it's funny because several people have asked me that. I think, you know, the funny thing is that even though the book came out in 2005 and, you know, I've been talking about it since then, I really do still think about these characters and what's going to happen to them. And I wouldn't rule out writing more stories with them. So, yeah, it's entirely possible. Entirely possible. Right now I'm working on a novel and it's occupied me for the last several years. So when that's done, maybe I can go back to this. Yeah. Oh, about the next novel. Well, I can't because it's just, it's almost done. So I'm really excited. I can't wait to start sharing it with readers. So it's called the Outside, and it's about another young man. It's about a young man who grows up in a slum in Casablanca, and his entire life he thinks that his father is dead. And then at the beginning of the novel, he discovers that his father is very much alive. This wealthy man living on the other side of town. So the opening is melodramatic on purpose because the whole point of the book, I think, is it explores. It explores the idea of truth and how that's different from facts. It explores religious fundamentalism. It explores the political situation in Morocco and sort of the choices that are really available to this man. You know, I was trying to come up with, like, a nifty little, like, short description for. But it's still with me now. So I guess the best way that I could describe it is that it's about the Arab street. You know, how Thomas Friedman, every few weeks, he loves to talk about what the Arab street thinks because he's so well informed. And so the book is about an actual character from the Arab street and what he goes through and what life is like for him and the choices he has to make at the end of the book. So, yeah. How long did you spend writing the book and revising path, like, to publication? Oh, yeah, sure. Let's see. I started writing this trying to think. It was published in 2005, it was sold in 2004, and I think I wrote it the entire time between 2000, the first 2001, the end of 2001. I know, I start. Yeah, so it's the end of 2001. I started writing it most of 2002 and 2003, and then I was still revising it before it went to the printer. So, yeah, so it took maybe two and a half years for this one. And the one that I'm working on right now, it's four and a half years. It's kind of a bigger book. And as far as the process of publication, this was really interesting because I honestly didn't know what to expect. I felt like I was writing a story. I didn't know if I could find even a publisher that was interested in the story. It's not even set in the United States, and the publishing industry does tend to be a little bit sort of turned inward, but it was a pretty smooth process. I found an agent in 2004, and she took the book and it sold, like, in two weeks. So it was A pretty simple process overall, the publishing. And even when it came out, I didn't know what to expect as far as the reception that it would get. But it has really been embraced by critics. And what has been wonderful about it is that it's been embraced by the Moroccan community. So that's kind of a neat thing. Yes. You spoke a little bit that the way you timed the book and the sort of the past and the present and the future was sort of a way to a different take on the integration novel. So you seem very aware that you were writing an integration novel note about. And I was wondering if you thought about it more in that sense, more than you did about the characters. Were there things? That's an interesting question. Well, I mean, as I said, it started with this character of Murad. That's who I had to guide me through this story. And I, you know, he is an immigrant. That's who he is. And so writing that character immigration is a big part of his life. But I also wrote. So that's how it started with him. But like writing about his life but before and his life after just gave me a sort of way to explore the entire character. And immigration is by no means the only sort of. The only theme in this book, because there's a lot of. It's essentially a book about modern Morocco. So if you've been to Morocco, you know that immigration is something that you will see every single day in one form or another in that society. So, for example, it could just be. Be something as simple as if it's in the summer, you can see on the freeway, literally caravans of cars coming back from Europe, because people are coming back for the summer, for vacation. So the traffic is horrible on the freeway because everybody's coming back. And then in September, everybody's going back. It could be. It's hard to explain, but it really. It's just very much a part of our culture now. It's part of our lives. So it's. I just don't think it's possible to write a novel about modern Morocco that doesn't feature immigration. But there's a lot of other things that are going on in the book. And I think that's. In a way, it's just a book about modern Morocco more than it is about other things. But yeah, I mean, at the beginning, it has to start with the characters. Otherwise, you know, I could just write a nonfiction book. But the character is what guided me through this because I was able to interested in him and I cared so deeply about him. In a way, I almost feel like I care too much because then it's kind of like having a kid where you want to protect them and their characters. You gotta let them do stuff. If you protect them too much, then they don't really go through life experiences. And so, in a way, I always have to fight that. Suffering from too much empathy. Not like parenthaly. So. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you for having me. Thank you very much.