Rukhsana Khan's Blog, page 26

How do you find the courage?

I received an email a few days ago from a lady who’s seriously trying to decide whether to pursue a career in publishing and she asked,

“My second question is what gives you the courage? I read a

blog in which you were saying that ‘you just have to go for it’ but I’ve

spent my life – not liking my own writing – I’m trying to get over it and

write a teen novel but I find myself wondering if I should bother.”

That’s a pretty good question and I thought it was worthy of its own blog post. I’ve been mulling it over for the past few days, and trying to figure out exactly how to answer it.

First of all, I think if you don’t ‘like your own writing’ then it might not be a good idea to pursue publishing it.

I mean if what you’re writing doesn’t excite you, then why would it excite anyone else?

I’ve always found that I’m the hardest critic of my own writing and I’ve always found that only when I think something is excellent does it get published. It doesn’t always get published, but usually. For instance, I thought the Hajj novel I finished was excellent but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have found a home…yet.) Somehow I still think it will.

But I do know that things I wrote that weren’t excellent, didn’t get published! Nor should they have been.

And I can honestly say that if I found an author out there who was writing my stories then I’d be thrilled, just read their work and find an easier way to make money.

I mean nobody sees all the work behind the scenes! All the ‘dirty’ work you have to do to make it as an author.

This week has been tough. I’ve been scrounging around doing a lot of the mucky business stuff. (Mind you some people excel at the mucky business stuff. They’d like nothing better than to spend their day on social media talking up their stuff in ways that don’t seem too obvious or obnoxious. Not me. I’d rather be writing.)

Believe it or not, writing the actual novel is the easy part! Or at least the ‘fun’ part.

It’s marketing it, that can be hard.

I read a very interesting article on a blog a few days ago called 7 Differences between Published and Unpublished Authors. Someone had tagged it on their facebook page. It’s here: http://www.authormedia.com/7-differen...

I think it’s pretty accurate for the most part.

And the weirdest thing is how I’ve had to learn to create a ‘platform’ the hard way. (By the way, this blog is part of my ‘platform’)

Here I digress, but I have a friend who was absolutely excellent at writing, is about my age, we attended the same writing workshops, and she ended up self-publishing her novel series online, got two cheques and basically that was it. I went to the website she’d created and there was no information about her, as the author, whatsoever. I guess it shouldn’t matter who’s writing the amazing story but somehow it does–especially when it comes to children’s literature.

I think everyone thinks, when they first start out that it’s just a matter of getting their work out there and they’ll be *discovered*. Ta Da!!!

I know I thought that.

I was so naive! It actually makes me laugh now because I actually thought that the world would stop for a moment and notice my books!

Ha!

I also thought that my friends and family would be glad to support my sales of books!

Ha!

More often than not, they’re glad to RECEIVE the books as gifts, but I don’t think any of them have actually bought one.

I do know that some family members have even given away books that I gave them, as gifts. Basically re-gifting them to people who’d been asking for them!

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

I loved number 2 on that list of 7 differences…, that published authors write to help and inspire others, they write to do something whereas unpublished authors write for themselves, to BE someone.

I think I was a bit guilty of that at the beginning. But I’ve learned the hard way to create my platform and yup, I write to help and inspire.

When I’m writing a story, I’m trying to express aspects of my personal experience, yes, in the hope that it will help and inspire others. When you think of it this way it helps you to plod through the rejections.

And yet in a way it’s not just my own personal experience I’m ‘representing’. As a Muslim I do have a responsibility to my community not to create anything that deepens the stereotypes and xenophobic challenges we face, and I take that responsibility seriously.

I’ve had LOTS of Muslims tell me that they identify with my books and really like my work, and they’re glad I’m out there expressing their perspective. Yes, that’s part of the reason I do this.

And I’ve often stated my agenda right out loud. It’s to humanize Muslims. To make us ‘less other’ and more accessible.

But really it’s to tell a good story! I have to entertain myself, so that point about writing for yourself doesn’t quite hold true. I definitely do write for myself as well.

If I could really find the kinds of stories I’m yearning for, I probably wouldn’t bother trying to create them.

It’s just easier to read them already written. Let someone else do the work.

So coming back to the question, it doesn’t take that much courage to write, it takes courage to publish, to put it out there and be the subject of bad reviews and mean commentary. And to try to make a living at it.

And in order to get the courage to open  yourself up to so much criticism and scrutiny, I think you just have to want it enough. And maybe you have to be a little egotistical too, thinking that you have something important and unique to say, something to add to the public domain that nobody else has addressed in quite the same way.

Frankly, it takes chutzpah!

And one of the best things that could have happened is that I didn’t achieve fame and recognition in the early years. It’s been a gradual process.

I’ve had to suffer a LOT of years of anonymity, and whereas in some circles I’m considered *established* I don’t feel *established*. I wonder if I ever will. I still feel like I’m striving hard.

But a lot of that striving comes down to craft.

There is great pleasure in crafting a beautiful sentence, that contributes to a beautiful paragraph that contributes to a beautiful narrative.

I’ve become immersed in the joys of vocabulary, searching for the right word, the exact right word that’ll make a sentence pop!

And always always the aim is to write something so joyous, so moving, that the person reading it forgets that they’re ‘reading’, forgets that it’s really just ink marks on a page or nowadays pixels on a tablet or computer screen. That’s the perpetual illusion of the artist.

So did I answer the question?

Basically if you want it bad enough, you find the courage. You do the work to make it happen.

And if courage is even an issue, maybe the writing life isn’t for you.

 

 

 

Feeling all flustered and unsettled…

after a visit to the Indian consulate last Monday!

Gee, I’m writing this Sunday night and I’m still not over the experience!

I wonder if I’m suffering a form of PTSD–and I mean no disrespect to those who actually have it. I’m just being a bit facetious.

I have a bunch of elderly people in my acquaintance and I find the older they get, the less they can take any sort of kink in their schedules.

They literally get anxious when they have to face up to a new unknown challenge.

And the weird thing is, I felt every bit as anxious when I was heading down to the consul general of India last Monday.

I’d checked out all the requirements I needed on their website.

Originally I’d gone to this organization that handles visas for them, but because I was born in Pakistan I couldn’t just use the organization to get my visa, I had to go down to the consul general in person.

One of the required documents was this downloaded form from their website that officials from my publisher had to fill out and get stamped by certain authorities in India.

They were supposed to scan it, once it was appropriately stamped in triplicate and email it back to me so I could print it out and take it down with me.

Took about a week to get it filled out, and then they told me that it would be better for me to take the original documents with me down to the consul general, so I waited for them to actually courier it to me.

I wonder how much it cost to courier those documents all the way from India! Didn’t get them till Sept. 13th, a Friday! Decided to go down the Monday the 16th.

Got to the consul general and they had a sort of metal detector, the kind you see in airport security that you had to walk through.

Fine. I walked through.

And then there was a clerk checking the documents I’d brought. He looked at my Canadian passport and told me that I needed an affidavit notarized by a public notary saying that I didn’t have Pakistani citizenship or a Pakistani passport.

I asked why that wasn’t on the website that I needed that??? He just shrugged and handed me a form and told me there was a place across the road but since it was downtown it would be expensive.

Ended up costing $35! And took about an hour!

Went back to the same clerk and showed him all my documents and then he says I need a photocopy of my Canadian passport!

Geez! I was ready to scream!

He said I could go down to the postoffice on the main floor and get a copy.

The website said to bring a money order for $132.40 and they couldn’t photocopy my darn passport in that amount???

Never mind! So I went down stairs once again to get the photocopy. Cost $.25!

Went back to the same clerk and he tells me to go through to ‘room #1. There was a line up.

Stand there for about fifteen minutes, and the line’s not getting any shorter.

*sigh*

And then the lady behind me, part of a young couple, asks if I’m from Pakistan, she noticed the affidavit and we get to talking. And we get to talking. I tell them I’m worried about all the rape stories coming out of India and the gent in front says, “Oh that’s always been happening. Just now they’re reporting on it.” And the lady says, “No, it’s safe in India.”

And it turns out the gent in front is worried because he just wants to ask the clerk if he can pick up something right away because he’s supposed to come back at 3 pm but he has to pick up his kids from school at that time, so he doesn’t want to irritate the clerk in any way.

While talking, I ask the same gent in front if he goes to India often. He says, “Whenever I get the feeling of going to India I come down to this office and deal with these hassles and the feeling goes away!”

That made us all laugh.

Then wouldn’t you know it, these three light-skinned bimbo ladies (not white–one spoke Hindi) come waltzing up to us and one of them says, “Oh you don’t mind if we just go in to drop off some cheques do you?” And before the gent in front can say anything they giggle, “Thanks!” And waltz on by.

The gent grumbles, “You know they’re going to sit down!”

And sure enough all three of them don’t just drop off anything, except themselves into the chair and they start talking to the clerk.

I was SO mad!

And the gent said, “Welcome to India! It’s because they’re light-skinned, they can get away with it.”

And I said, “Why would anyone ever want to go to India!?”

And told both of them that–even with the Taj Mahal– it was never on my list of places to visit.

And even though it’s an incredibly honor to be invited to the Bookaroo festival, I mean it’s not a place I’d make an effort to go to. The only reason I’m going is to launch this book.

And when the bimbos came out they giggled, “Sorry about that!”

But I was in no mood to let them off that easy. I said, “You know you shouldn’t be cutting the line like that. It’s not nice!”

And the two of them pretended not to hear me.

And then finally the third one came out and did the same thing!

Grrr.

The gent in front said, “You’re going to get me in trouble. If the clerk sees, and he liked them, he might decide, ‘That’s it, I’m going for lunch. Be back tomorrow.’”

Arbitrarily just like that!

Finally I get my turn, and the clerk says, “Why did they call this a conference? It’s a festival? Why didn’t the organizers get this clearance. They were supposed to…blah blah blah.”

And he writes in green ink all over the application.

I think they only do that to be difficult.

At the end of it he says it’ll be 4-6 weeks to get my visa.

Geez!

Oh, and I didn’t even need that form my publisher worked so hard to fill out, have stamped and courier to me!!!

Grrr!!!

Got home and my hubby said, “Welcome to India!” And said it would be so much worse once I get there!

 

 

Napoleon Dynamite and Young Humor…

My son and I have a constant struggle going on.

He keeps trying to get me to watch videos or listen to songs that he likes and I keep getting him to read Watership Down.

I think I’m actually more open minded than he is because while I’ve read and experienced a LOT of the stuff that he’s recommended and actually found a lot of it to be pretty darned good, he is more reticent to indulge in my tastes.

And yet, when I was watching Pan’s Labyrinth and told him he should come and see this particularly creepy scene, he actually listened to me so that it freaked him out something terrible. For those who might have seen the movie you probably know which scene I’m talking about. It’s the scene with the pale man. *shudder*

The tables were turned when it came to a sleeper hit called Napoleon Dynamite. This movie really embodies the new ‘youth’ humor style.

And frankly for the longest time I just didn’t get it.

It’s the awkward type of humor, the senseless absurd stuff, that older people just look at and think, “Huh?” That’s supposed to be funny?

So I was walking by when my son was watching Napoleon Dynamite and I sat down and saw a few scenes, especially the one where the girl (love interest) is trying to sell gimp bracelets (I call it gimp, you know that plastic lace stuff that you braid into bracelets and stuff in day camp) and she’s so shy she ends up running away and he takes her case (on wheels) to school to give it back to her, and yup, I didn’t get the humor of it.

Not until I watched the whole darn thing.

I talked myself into it one day.

This is how the conversation with myself went:

Rukhsana, you call yourself a children’s author, you deal with youth sensibilities all the time, you’ve got to ‘get’ them. And that means getting what they think is funny.

Watch it!

So I did.

It was like watching a foreign movie for goodness sakes!

It’s like I needed a translator, or maybe a coach or something explaining things to me, and yet after a short time, I did indeed ’get’ it.

I just relaxed and went with the flow and I saw the essentials of plot and characterization, and yes, I have to admit it, they were brilliant.

Okay it begins with the irony that the main character, this tall lanky washed out pale face with curly mousy brown hair has such an unusual name: Napoleon Dynamite. It gives you, the viewer a sense, that he is not as ‘blah’ as he seems.

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And you go on a journey with him at this mid-western white-washed blah school where he gets pummeled by bullies and then kicks at the air in defiance with his moon boots in a totally useless and pathetic gesture, and something about him, is actually endearing. You get to know all these totally weird and yet completely recognizable characters and how they’re going through their own journeys and you really really start to hate Napoleon’s useless uncle and you absolutely cheer when he throws an orange at his windshield. (spoiler alert)

He’s a total dork…and yet…

I’m chuckling just typing all this, remembering all the little moments in the movie that don’t seem like much on their own, but are really really doggone funny!

Just watch it! It’s good clean fun. And might even restore your faith in young people because their humor is yeah, kind of funny.

You just have to open your mind to access it.

 

Hmm…being studied.

I know it must seem self-evident that if you have a public blog and you produce children’s literature that is published, ie. designed to reach the ‘public’, it opens yourself up to the possibility of being studied by academics.

Being parsed and analyzed, having symbolism attributed that you had no intention of, stuff like that.

I know it must seem obvious, and yet it still always throws me for a loop when I’m contacted by academics who read my work and my blog, teach it in their classrooms at university and college levels and then interview me with questions that never occurred to me and make me think of my work in a totally objective and even alien manner.

This week has been particularly interesting because I was on both the giving and the receiving side of such analysis.

With the release of the new movie Salinger, Rawal TV invited me to talk about Catcher in the Rye, so here I am analyzing it in pretty much the same way academics might analyze my own work.

You can watch the program here:

And then some time during the week a university professor from Ohio contacted me about doing an interview about the role of Muslims in children’s literature.

And this lady had actually read the relevant articles on my website, she’d even read my Denmark speech in which I talked about the issue.

She’s not the first academic to contact me, and originally, what with the hectic nature of this week, originally I declined, but she was so sweet, I agreed to a phone interview. (It’s been crazy! Finally got this document that my publisher in India was kind enough to courier to me, so I can completely my Indian visa application!)

So she called me the other night and we had this fabulous conversation! I had mentioned in our correspondence that I’d like to transcribe the conversation so I could refer back to it.

I think we talked about an hour and then at the end I found out that she had recorded it.

And it was funny, because even though I had wanted to transcribe it anyway, knowing after the fact that you’ve been recorded is a bit jarring.

And I tried to think back to what I said and think if I had said anything recriminating, but couldn’t think of anything off hand.

She said she’d wanted to tell me at the beginning but we just bounced right into the conversation she thought it would disturb the flow and I thought she was right.

She asked me if I was okay with it, and of course I said yes.

When she was kind enough to send me the recording as an MP3 file I listened to the whole thing thinking much like I always do that I sound like such a goof when I’m talking! And the only thing I could find that might not be ‘politically correct’ was my ranting about Suzanne Fisher Staples.

In the past, people have told me I should be more diplomatic, don’t mention authors whose works I hate by name, so I started only referring to Suzanne Fisher Staples work Shabanu and not mentioning it by name, but really who cares if she ever hears that I can’t stand her work?

I already confronted her face to face with what I thought of it!

But still, it’s jarring to hear yourself talking without being aware of the fact that you’re being recorded.

You talk differently, even if you think no, I’m always the same, no, I realize I’m not quite. I am more guarded, as one would expect, when you know you’re being recorded.

And then it reminded me of all those open mic gaffes you hear politicians make.

It’s just interesting.

We’re being analyzed.

Whenever we put ourselves out there, we’re being analyzed–and actually even when we don’t put ourselves out there! What with all the NSA wire tapping out there!

Should we be on our guard? Honestly what’s the point?

 

Just because I dress my head…

doesn’t mean that I’m NOT Canadian!!!!

Read a stupid headline in the Toronto Star that really ticked me off! It said that are Canadians who wear religious head gear less ‘Canadian’???

Omigosh!

What does a scarf on my head have to do with my ‘Canadian-ness’. Or American-ness, Or British-ness, for that matter???

I guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that it seems the majority of the recognition I’ve received for my books is from outside the country I call home (Canada!).

I guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that the powers that be maybe don’t think my work is that ‘Canadian’ in that I have never been up for any major major, I mean really big awards in Canada.

In fact I think it’s testament to American innovation that they seem to ‘get me’ better than Canadians do.

Reminds me of that movie Moneyball, with Brad Pitt. (By the way, Pitt should have gotten an oscar for his performance! He was so good I forgot it was Brad Pitt!)

It’s one of those movies that I was waiting and waiting for to hit T.V. Hubby, son and I actually first saw it in the cinema! And we loved it then!

By the way, it’s so good that both hubby and son watched it again with me! Did I mention it’s that good?!

Oh, and by another way, EVERY artist should watch that movie! I’ve watched it about four times now and it still doesn’t cease to mesmerize me!

Yeah, it’s about baseball, but it’s about baseball like Watership Down is about bunnies!

In that it’s about so much more!!!

I love that Moneyball had no nudity or perverseness in it at all! No romantic story line! It didn’t need one! It was all about one man’s paralyzing fear of being right! Of being fantastic!

I remember when I was first starting out to become an author it wasn’t the fear of failure that was hard to overcome.

It was actually the fear of success.

That’s what Moneyball is all about!

I don’t want to spoil it for you! Just go and watch it, just like you should go and read Watership Down if you haven’t already!

Anyway, getting back to my point, my heart grows in Canada.

I am connected to the soil in some mystical way.

And anyone who wants to question my loyalty to this wonderful Canada better watch out! I might just punch them in the mouth!

So there!

Be forewarned!

 

Lonely at the top…

I guess it takes rejoining Facebook to realize that I’ve lost four friends over the years–one Muslim, one Jewish and two Christian.

How very egalitarian of me!

I’m not sure what I did.

No, I must be honest. In one of the situations I know exactly what I did! I made the mistake of telling the person the truth, as I saw it, about her writing. Telling her that she needed to spend less time on social media and more time working on her craft–that she had EXCELLENT ideas but it was her execution that needed work. I even offered to help her! (I hardly ever do that!) But still she never forgave me.

And with the Jewish friend, the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was partly to blame. She was spouting the Zionist talking points of how Israel was the real victim and I couldn’t take it, I told her I ‘couldn’t do this’, and I backed away from the friendship first.

We’d been friends for more than fifteen years, and oh how I missed her. So we reconnected, agreeing to stay away from issues of politics and I asked her if she could at least admit that Israel bore part of the responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians and her response was, “Of course, Israel’s not perfect…”

It was enough for me that she could at least admit that much.

Probably a mistake on my part. And even as we started getting back together there was a part of me that knew it wouldn’t last.

And it didn’t.

But what I still don’t understand is why did she accept a gift from me, a copy of Big Red Lollipop, the night before she broke it off the next day?

Was it the book?

How could it have been?

I would think it was an isolated experience except the same thing happened with another friend. We met downtown, while she was in town and I gave her a copy of Wanting Mor and she was thrilled, saying she couldn’t wait to read it on the plane back, and she’d let me know what she thought as soon as she was done… and then silence.

Radio silence for about four years, yeah, that sounds right.

The temptation with facebook is to look up people you haven’t connected with for a while. It’s like you can ‘stalk’ them, read their updates, view their pictures (if they’re public) and remember the good times you believe you had together.

Pathetic!  I know!

Why is it we hanker after people who have so obviously rejected us when our lives are full of other people who love us???

And so I found her, and I friended her, and yeah, she ‘friended’ me back but no message, no ‘howdy how’ve you been?’ sort of thing at all. Just a friend back, and I’m thinking, “Why on earth did I bother???”

And then I reconnected with another friend on facebook, a Muslim I basically grew up with. I sent her a message and her response was so brief, not even answering the questions I’d posed about her daughter…I thought wow, she’s only being polite.

And again I thought, “Why did I bother?”

I remember watching some relationship expert dispensing advice and she said something interesting. She said that the people who reject you are actually doing you a favour. She was talking about romantic relationships but I think the advice holds true for friendships as well.

That by rejecting you, they’re letting you go so you can move on and find people who really are ‘that into you’.

I’m really fortunate.

I do have a lot of friends!

But three of these were my original writer friends. I thought they’d be with me on the journey to the top.

I still have some original writer friends and that’s all good. They’re wonderful!

But the more successful I get, it seems that I’m leaving some of them behind, and not by my choice.

…

Oh Pish tosh!!!

You know what’s funny?

Even as I’m finishing up this sort of silly old melancholy post, who should call but one of my daughters?

And I got to talk to one of my grandsons, who exclaimed “Nani!” and my heart took a little flip flop in my chest.

And I heard about how he’d poured honey in his head, the silly little fellow!

And he needed a bath.

Omigosh! Who the heck cares about these people who want nothing to do with me?!

 

 

 

Ups and downs, good news, trips and reviews!

It’s the dog days of summer and it’s hard to get enthusiastic about much!

Had a long talk with an editor on what’s working and not working with some sample chapters I sent her.

It was funny. As I’m talking to her and she’s confirming all of my worst fears about the piece, there’s part of me stepping back and watching the whole exchange with something like amusement, noticing in particular how much I’ve changed from those early days when I’d hang on to every editor’s words like I was dangling from a precipice and this editor held my salvation.

Oh brother!

In the end I thought she was quite right in most of her assessments, and so what? I’ve got my heart set on a bunch of other projects darn it, and I told her that the problem was that although I liked the project, I was very distracted.

I feel like I have to finish up the other pieces and then move back to this, which could be a really good story if I put all my attention on it!

So chalk that up to a bit of frustration.

But that’s about the only bad news.

I did receive the travel grant for India’s Bookaroo conference in November! And right now I’m jumping through the hoops and running the gauntlet that is the Indian visa application! And there’s a special red-tape ‘hell’ they’ve got designated for applicants of Pakistani origin.

It was funny. When I searched online for the Indian consulate there was a rating system in place, and out of ten possible stars they got 2 1/2!

I think people were being generous in even giving them that! And it’s not like I feel that way about all visa processes!

The Mexican consulate were absolutely wonderful! And the Canadian process for passport renewal is pretty easy too!

I think the funniest thing is this form I had to download and email to my publisher in India, my sponsor, where they had to state that they’d be keeping an ‘eye’ on me and making sure ‘I behave’. Honest! They used phrases just like that!

With all the stories of rape in the news, I’m feeling a bit of trepidation! Even though I’m a seasoned traveller and I’m careful. Hubby said to just stick around white people when I’m going to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, insha Allah, and I’ll be fine.

Once I’ve got all the proper paperwork, I’ll head down to the consulate and see what happens. Insha Allah, it’ll be okay, but it’s hanging over my head like an axe, causing me a bit of anxiety.

But yesterday I did get some good news!

KING FOR A DAY seems to be making a bit of a splash!

In addition to being chosen by the Junior Library Guild, which is akin to a sort of ‘award’ I’ve heard (Big Red Lollipop was also chosen by them! So that’s a very good sign!) KING FOR A DAY received a starred review from Kirkus.

Can’t quote it yet, the review will be live on the 31st of August or something.

But woohoo! Good sign!

Kirkus is tough!

So here’s to hoping for good things!

 

Woohoo! An interview with my newest illustrator: Christiane Kromer!

I simply love hearing and learning about other artists’ and authors’ creative process!

When Christiane contacted me after she’d finished the artwork for my new book King for a Day, I called her up and we talked on the phone and as we were talking I thought, hey, this would make a fantastic blog post or page on my website for educators who want to know the back story! So here’s the interview! I sent her the transcription and Christiane added notes to further flesh out her thoughts!

I had included a bunch of Christiane’s magnificent illustrations but unfortunately when I uploaded the post, they disappeared! So except for the teeny tiny pic of Christiane I found online, this post is mostly her words! Visit her website to see some of her fantastic artwork!

 

Christiane Krömer interview.

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www.christianekromer.com

 

RK: How did you get the inspiration for the illustrations?

CK: At the very beginning, when I had read the manuscript but was still waiting for the finished version I visited an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India 1100-1900. I came out transformed, almost as if I was on LSD. I felt such a burst of color inside of me, artistic possibility, such a surge of energy. Next I found out that Lahore, where your story takes place, was a major city of the Mughals! That’s when I knew: This is it! I have to do the whole book in Mughal miniature style!

At that time, I still knew very little about Pakistan. I once had a fantastic Pakistani roommate but realized with regret that I’ve asked her way too few questions about her whereabouts. I knew about Pakistan and India being separated, I’d seen my fill of Bollywood movies about that subject, but I didn’t know a lot about the actual geography. Before I was offered to illustrate your story I didn’t know that Lahore even existed. And I didn’t know that culturally India and Pakistan were so close.

But the more research I did, the more I felt that I virtually lived in Lahore. When I really started to catch fire was when I found out about the existence of the beautiful old city of Lahore, the Walled City. There were narrow alleys, telegraph wires, goats, bicycles, skinny cats, hairdressers discussing politics on the doorsteps, children playing, cracks in the walls of ancient Mughal facades, walls that were covered with flyers in beautiful Urdu calligraphy… I could only imagine the smells and sounds of it… and I began to make my virtual home there. Now I knew exactly where the kids in the book should live! Eventually, I even downloaded maps of the Walled City and decided where our kids’ roof would have to be so they’d have a good view of Badshahi Mosque, the beautiful Mughal style landmark of Lahore that resembles the Taj Mahal. Without ever having physically been there, I became a little bit of a “virtual patriot”.

 

RK: How did you start designing the book?

CK: My very first impression, prior to the Mughal exhibit, hadn’t been very good. I had done research on youtube and I was really put off, because what I found  when I typed in “basant” were I only grainy amateur videos of macho men on roofs. No woman in sight! Full of cynicism I thought, ‘That’s not a national holiday, it’s a men’s holiday.’ At the same time I knew that when a project comes to me, it comes from God. It is an offer to me to make visible deep humanness, its an offer to go on an intense, work-filled joyride. And so I just knew that I’m going to transform it into something beautiful.

 

Finally I got the manuscript I could work with. I did pencil sketches, and the publisher and I discussed many changes before I could, at last, rummage through my boxes full of colorful papers for the actual artwork. I ended up not working in the Mughal miniature style but in my old collage style that I had developed in my previous books. However, I made sure that, like in the miniature paintings, the Mughal style arches of Lahore are like a red thread  that leads throughout the book, beginning with the title and even the dedication-page. And on one page, I drew many little children who are catching kites on a tan-colored Indian paper, just like the Mughal miniatures.

Today’s cityscape of Lahore seems to be pretty beige, but since the story takes place during a joyous festivity, I wanted there to be a feast of color on every page, not just the culminatory one where all the kites are in the sky. Suddenly I got a great idea: I went out and bought fabric swatches with gorgeous textures and patterns in the Indian and Pakistani fabric stores around 39th Street in Manhattan. Now the real ecstasy began. My workspace turned into a colorful landscape of papers, fabrics, photos of Pakistani street scenes, cutout shapes of children I had drawn, inkpots, brushes, pencils… and my ever-present teapot. No wall, no surface was there that didn’t have anything Pakistani or silken or satin on it. In the middle was always my illustration board on which it would all assemble. There, tiny bits of paper pieces would be endlessly pushed around until they found their perfect spot. I’m sorry to say that this is all that got published, and not the colorful mess around it as well!

For me though, an illustration stands or falls with whether the faces of the people on it are beautiful. If they are not I’m not satisfied with the whole page, no matter how gorgeous the colors. The faces can be the hardest part, and the hardest to control. They seem to have a life of their own; they have true personalities, and it is up to them if they want to appear at my pencil’s tip or not. Sometimes they simply seem to fall on the paper by themselves and look great right away, and on other days I can draw the same face over and over a hundred times, and each time again it looks like a grimace. That is illustrator hell!

When I worked on  Anh’s Anger I had very little time. So without doing any pencil sketches, I jumped right into the finals. That’s where the book got its slammed-together, lively look. But King for a Day became a very detailed work because it was based on very detailed pencil sketches. It was meticulously planned.

RK: So did you really grow from this process?

CK: I did.

RK: In what ways did you grow?

CK: I grew a lot in communicating with the editor and art director. I’ve never been as authentic in my communication, talking about what is going on in me internally during the artistic process. And when we were discussing changes I was really speaking from the heart. I learned to trust that if I do that, good things will happen. All that good stuff will go into the book, and you can feel it when you hold it in your hands. I live in New York, and since 9/11 and then Hurricane Sandy (during which I worked on this book), my perception of life completely changed: I realized that life can be over at any minute, so you have to do what is important in your life NOW, or it might be too late. Every book could be my last book. So it has to become good! I have to risk everything – making myself vulnerable, being true to myself, fighting for my ideas. And I know that insisting on my vision of how I want the illustrations to look is not an expression of my egotistic willfulness, but it means to fully accept my responsibility for them. It means to enable this beautiful vision I see “somewhere up there” to really come through me and turn into reality, radiate out into the world as a gift to everyone. If I don’t stand up for my vision it feels as if life would have been in vain.

At the very beginning when I did research about Pakistan, before I had discovered Mughal miniature painting and the beauty of the Walled City of Lahore, I had found many disconcerting things. Apart from the macho men on the roofs, I came across a lot of images of violence. But even then I knew, love, vitality and plain human goodness just have to be there. There is no way it cannot be.  I just had to find it, trust that it is there, connect to it, and if it all starts in my own heart.  So I was trying to find a sacred space within myself from which I could work, from which I could create beauty. And then, there it was: In my inner landscape appeared a market place inside of a tall Mughal style building. Rays of light from high-up windows fell silently upon everything. It was a casual, every-day place, not a mosque, not a religious place, and yet it felt sacred, because I realized, only good people, or the highest part of people could go there. Everyone moved in peacefulness and calm. There were young people, old people, women, men, children, donkeys, pigeons, sacks of grain and straw. There were wonderful, yet every-day smells: the scent of burned wood, rosewater, donkey dung. And this turned into the first illustration I did.

There was no mention in the manuscript about this market scene, but it felt so natural to put it in there. Half way done, I suddenly expected that the editor would want me to take it out, but it seemed to work well.

In a previous version of the back matter you not only wrote about the food and the festivities around basant, but that you were standing on the roof and eating an orange, so I included a lot of oranges in the illustrations, and I could just imagine the smell of orange blossoms all over Lahore!

That’s why there’s also an orange vendor!

RK: Oh that’s hilarious! No wonder there’s such a tinge of orange through the illustrations! I loved that first illustration. You start on the ground and get to the roof! You’re going up!

a developing illustration

RK: How many books have you illustrated?

CK: This is my sixth book.

RK: Can you name the other books?

CK: The very first book I did was a West African tale called The Treehouse Children, published by Simon & Schuster in 1994

Then came Flower Girl Butterflies, published by Harper Collins.

The third book was for a Japanese religion called Tenrikyo and was published by Tenri Cultural Institute. The book’s title is God the Parent’s Blessings.

RK: So did you get to go to Japan?

CK: Three times, and the third time they invited me in appreciation of the art I did for the book.

Then, the fourth book was Anh’s Anger, published by Plum Blossom Press, the children’s book imprint of Parallax Press. This is the Buddhist publisher who publishes the books of Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

The fifth book was Steps and Stones, the second book in the Anh’s Anger series.

And now, there is King for a Day. It has been a work of two years.

RK: Well I think you’ve done a fabulous job on King for a Day! And it’s been such a pleasure getting to know you Christiane and know more about your creative process!

CK: And thank you, Rukhsana, for writing such a wonderful story! Because of it, my vision of the world has broadened. And without it, I would have never known about the oranges in Lahore!

 

Understanding the Middle East…

One of the most depressing thing you can do is go to the comments section of any article about something happening in a Muslim country.

Now I get that the internet offers a modicum of anonymity that isn’t available in everyday life and that very very few people would actually utter these racist horrible remarks right to my face, but still…

There’s both good and bad to that.

And maybe I’m a bit masochistic in even reading the comments, but I do it with a fair amount of regularity, exercising a good amount of discipline, in order to remind myself what kind of mentality exists under the veneer of civility here in the west.

Goodness, most times I even forget I’m wearing a hijab never mind that I’m in any way ‘different’ from the average Canadian. Reading the comments is an, “Oh yeah, that’s what a lot of people really think when they first look at me!” kind of reminder.

It’s hard watching the news, and even harder watching the ‘lack of news’ on the carnage in Egypt.

Over 600 people killed in Egypt and CNN barely covers it. They’re all over that blonde who got abducted by the family friend.

It’s kind of surreal.

And ask the average American what they think of Muslims and those people ‘over there’ and they somehow think that Arabs are just different. They’re crazy, irrational, and according to the comments on one news story, every day that ends in a ‘y’ is a ‘day of rage’ for them.

Came across an interesting article that I think makes some good points:

http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/the-idiot-s-guide-to-america-s-role-in-the-middle-east-1.1218797

Read another article too but I can’t recall the link. It was talking about ‘winning the hearts of minds’ of the Muslim world, and it made the point that hey, Muslims aren’t as dumb as Obama seems to think they are.

It’s fundamentally about fairness, and there is none when it comes to America’s involvement as an honest broker for peace, especially with regards to Israel and Palestine.

Israel has recently launched an initiative where it actually pays people to defend it online.

Don’t they realize they can do that all they want but it’s not going to  change their image?

All the sweet talk in the world won’t hide the fact that they’re blatantly oppressing people and stealing their land.

The people who are on Israel’s side won’t change their minds of course.

There’s a double standard out there and a good amount of people think that any Muslim gets whatever comes to them.

I remember when the IDF went into Jenin and slaughtered dozens of people and razed buildings to the ground. And the Palestinians called it a massacre and the Israelis argued back saying that enough people hadn’t been killed to warrant the label of ‘massacre’.

And people bought that argument!

Basically Muslims have to stop looking to America or anyone else for approval.

They have to live up to their own standards and values and stop riding the coattails of other people’s agendas, understanding that their own standards and values are pretty darn universal!

Stop hankering after American approval.

It aint coming!

But as long as we have the king of Saudi Arabia coming out on the side of the Egyptian military, justifying the massacre of more than 600 fellow Muslims along with giving the Egyptian military 5 billion dollars in ‘aid’ after Morsi was overthrown then it doesn’t even matter that the American government refuses to call a coup a coup so that they can line the pockets of the murderers too.

And maybe those bigots have a point.

Maybe Muslims do deserve whatever they get!

Until we can stop being divided and conquered, nothing is ever going to change.

God help us all!

It’s enough to knock me off my diet for goodness sakes!

Subhan Allah!

 

 

Small town bureaucracy!!! Aaaargh!

Went up to Newmarket this morning for a presentation sponsored by Weaving Words festival.

Weaving Words is storytelling festival taking place just north of Toronto on Sept. 29th. Free to all! And they invited me!

Well to promote it, they asked me to do a storytelling session at the Newmarket Public Library!

Newmarket is a cute little town, with a rustic feel to it! I love the old red brick buildings and the churches on Main St. with their tall narrow steeples.

And oh, the flower baskets! On every lamp post and barrels of flowers on every corner of the road! It’s part of York region.

And there’s something definitely wrong with the mentality of the folks of York region!

Every year The Canadian Children’s Book Centre–a national entity whose job it is to promote Canadian literature, authors and artists, has a grade one book giveaway.

Think about it! The CCBC chooses one book from the canon of Canadian children’s literature and they give a copy to EVERY grade one student in the country–for free!

What a way to promote literacy and reading!

And the company who sponsors this book giveaway is Toronto Dominion Bank.

TD bank has no say in what book is chosen, no say in anything to do with the program. They’re just the money behind it.

Can you blame them for wanting their name acknowledge on the book? I sure can’t.

It’s a small price to pay.

But because of the corporate logo, the region of York has decided that their students don’t get to officially receive a copy of the book giveaway!

Who are the officials of York region to prevent the children from benefitting from such a program???

Aaaargh!

Bureaucrats!!!

Well, anyway, it had been a few months since I’d done a storytelling presentation, and even though I’ve been storytelling for fifteen years now, I can’t help getting just a titch nervous after it’s been a while.

Oh it’s ridiculous! One I start, alhamdu lillah, I get right back into the groove of it! And there’s no need to be nervous, but still!

But then library gigs are always iffy. You never can tell who’s going to show up as an audience.

And as the time for my session came close and there was no one there, I started to get nervous.

But then who shows up but the head librarians two daughters!

I have many librarian friends but this gentleman is one of my favourites! He was originally head of the Mississauga system but now he’s moved up to Newmarket!

It was so nice to see him!

He’s the one who said that reading Many Windows made him cry.

So I told some folktales to his little daughters and then another troop of kids came traipsing in and in the end we had a nice group of kids!

Ended up with Big Red  Lollipop, a crowd favourite!

Alhamdu lillah, lots of fun!

Looking forward to the Weaving Words festival on Sept. 29th insha Allah!