Selma's VM writing workshop
In a very special Virtual Majlis session, author Selma Dabbagh met last night with 10 Al Fakhoora students for a fascinating writing workshop.
Selma’s recently published novel, ‘Out of It’ (Bloomsbury, 2011) book bears a special significance for the Al Fakhoora students for numerous reasons. Gaza is the main location for the novel, with other sections based in London and the Gulf, and the two central characters of the novel are also young, like the students, and negotiating their feelings towards the mounting political situation around them.
The students’ interest in Selma’s choice of Gaza as a location for the novel was immediately evident, and if there had been fears of the students feeling territorial, there needn’t have been! It was moving and hugely satisfying for the author to know that the students felt only curiosity, and pride, at her use of Gaza; a wonderful reaction from what Selma called one of her “most important audiences,” for this reason.
Selma was very impressed by the questions that were posed by the students, and the level of engagement and wider reading the students enjoyed, which included familiarity with writers such as VS Naipaul and Nadine Gordimer, despite the difficulties with importing reading material into Gaza due to the illegal blockade.
One of the first questions raised was the meaning of the book’s title; and what was the ‘it’ that the characters were relating to. Selma explained that the meaning was three-fold. The central character of Rashid is a dope smoker, and is often ‘out of it’ mentally. There is also the tension that all the characters experience in terms of their relationship with the political ‘cause.’ Part of the storyline is also concerned with Rashid trying to get out of the physical place of Gaza, which comes in the form of an opportunity to get ‘out of it’ and move to the UK.
When asked about the difficulty of melding factual representation of an aged political struggle, with a narrative that remains engaging and paced, she had some good advice.
She suggested avoiding too much preaching and to consider summarizing or selecting from history, rather than trying to cover every aspect of the Palestinian story. If a writer feels that the narrative is being compromised in order to include factual information, then its advisable to cut down on how much is included. The most important thing is to communicate emotion, and this can be jeopardized if the narrative becomes overloaded with political statements.
She also explained the difficulty of enforcing an emotion upon the reader; that the writer must write in a way that emotion occurs naturally, as opposed to demanding a reaction of empathy or outrage, for example.
In light of this, one student asked about her experiences of this not working well, and she recounted a novel that she’d felt unable to continue with as it began with a torture scene, before any characterization was established. This reinforced the importance of building characters, and shaping them into familiar people in the reader’s imagination, before you ask the reader to experience strongly negative emotive experiences that the character may be going through.
She explained to the group the effectiveness of using narrative devices when action is set in a political situation that the reader may be unfamiliar with. Describing a long-standing cultural or political situation, like the blockade in Gaza, and all the physical representations of this, from the checkpoints to the shortage of electricity, can be tricky to intersperse in the narrative without it sounding unnatural. Selma advised that sometimes the use of a child’s voice, or maybe the perspective of an outsider, with the natural intrigue and questions that come with these points of view can help tackle this specific problem.
In her own novel, the characters of Rashid and his twin sister Iman, are children of the former PLO leadership in exile who have lived in various countries and cultures. This allows the reader to experience the newness of Gaza alongside them, thanks to their insider-outsider status.
Selma left the group with a number of recommendations for further reading, tailored to her different students and based on their questions and the interests they had.
We look forward to her next visit to us, and to her thoughts on the students’ blog entries!
