I learned to read when I was about three years old. I read death notices. Back in the 1980s, when someone died, the family would print death notices and post them around the neighbourhood. They were sometimes posted on low fences so I could read them: they were at my eye level. This is to say: I read everything. I read the back of the cereal boxes, any book I could lay my hands on, and the newspaper. By age five, I was reading stories for other children in my kindergarten.
Words always held a kind of magic for me. To tell a story by writing it on a page—that was magic. To scribble something on a page and transmit what’s inside your head into my head—sorcery. It took me a long time to convince myself that I could write.
It started with little things. I wrote for the primary school’s newspaper, and people told me I wrote like I talked. They could hear me speak when they read the article. For some reason, that felt like a compliment. But writing books was reserved only for special people—for magicians. I was better off going to university and studying something I could make a living with.
My mum wanted me to be a doctor because I was smart. She was sorely disappointed when I was attracted to the humanities. We didn’t have a proper literature teacher at the school, though, so I took Bible studies (the teacher taught us the stories), English and Arabic—the only foreign languages taught at my school. I was a good student, but there’s only so much you can study at a university with an A+ in Bible studies. I studied psychology.
When we moved to Canada, writing a blog was a way to keep in touch with the family. I wrote little stories about daily life in the tundras of Ottawa. Stories about how ineffectual our coats had been and how the bread grows in plastic wraps on never-ending supermarket shelves. And there was that compliment again: You write so well, I can hear you speak when I read your blog. By the time I was doing the PhD, I devoured every book on academic writing. I started a blog about the intersection between parenting and researching child development. But I was not a writer.
We moved to London, England, the city of poets. I had finished my PhD and was trying to figure out how to do research—which I loved—and still see my kids more than once a week. While I was looking, I dabbled in writing fiction and read a lot of writing advice.
And then my dad died.
In the most cliched plot twist ever conjured, I realised that time was running out. It helped that in the years leading up to this, I learned that academics, and even university professors, are just people—that even writers are just people. A year later, I stumbled upon a writers’ group, and when the organiser asked me to co-host the group, I realised maybe I knew enough to be an actual writer.
I experimented with all sorts, and over the next few years, I wrote almost two novels that weren’t actually novels, but I didn’t know that. I learned a lot from writing these and trying to figure out what I wanted to write and how I wanted these novels to look. I wrote one novel that is actually a novel. And I also wrote short stories. I sent my short stories to people, but no one wanted to publish them. I still don’t know why, but I’m guessing they weren’t exactly what the editors sought. I worked on these short stories with a mentor.
At some point, my supporting spouse said I should publish the short stories myself. At that point, I was also thinking about publishing the novel that was a novel, and I figured it would be a good exercise. And that’s how Human Fragments, my short stories collection, became a thing. I picked three of my best short stories, and basically closed my eyes and pressed “publish”. And just like that, I was a published author. I was one of the magicians.
Implausibly, nothing happened. Well, all sorts of things happened, but I didn’t become an overnight success. The New York Times didn’t call, and I wasn’t nominated for a prestigious literary award. I kept writing. And people read my short stories and liked them. Up to thirty people, some of them I don’t even know, rated the book on the various Amazon shops and on Goodreads. As I write this, over 800 people downloaded the book, and some even paid for it (even though it’s free and Amazon are being annoying about it). It’s not a bestseller, but it’s more than I thought I would get.
Perhaps, somewhere, someday, someone would read my words and be inspired. They would think I’m a magician. Perhaps they would even look for my blog and find this post, trying to glimpse the magic. After they recover from the disappointment, perhaps they will think that they, too, could be published authors.
To read Human Fragments, click here.
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