This year, the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) has selected Tamim Ansary’s memoir “West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story” for it’s One City One Book program. The good folks at SFPL invited us to interview Tamim and we sat down for an in-depth conversation at Tamim’s home which lasted nearly two hours. In this wide ranging interview Tamim 
discusses his book, his life, and his politics. The interview explores concepts like the social memory of civilizations, Tamim’s views about the war in Afghanistan, and discusses what being American means to him. Below is an edited version of the conversation.
Tamim will be appearing at several locations around San Francisco for readings and discussions about the book. For more information about local appearances check out the library website. You can also join an online discussion about the book and this interview at the main LitMinds site.
About the Book
LitMinds: Can you tell us how this book came about?
Tamim: A couple of years before 9/11, I had this idea for a book that would be about road trips I had taken. I thought I’ll write about three road trips and then put all of them together… I’d call it “The Journey of a Life.” So I selected my road trips and I started to write.
Then at a point, it struck me that I hadn’t chosen the journey that brought me from Afghanistan to the United States and in fact all three of those trips I was talking about had happened since I came to America. I discovered I couldn’t remember anything about the journey coming here.
That got me thinking about the before and the after in terms of my own life. I started to realize that in a sense I was living as the person I became after I came to the United States and that there was another guy in there too. And then for the next year, whenever I could take some time off from paying work, I started to just sit down and recollect anything I could about my life before I left. I wrote a thousand pages and I thought it was for a book I would write at some point later in my life.
LitMinds: How do you do that? If you’ve forgotten experiences from forty years ago, how do you rediscover them?
Tamim: The process of memory is a process of letting go because memory works by association. So when you get a hold of something it leads you to one thing and that leads you to another thing. The trick is to not impose the writer’s mind on the structure of your memories. I’ll give you an example: I remember when I went back to Afghanistan or tried to go back to Afghanistan, in 1979 – I was in Paris and I met this Afghan guy there and I guess I had an idea of what that interaction was – and I was trying to write that and no memories were coming. And then I remembered that he told me a lot of things about my family like “I know your this relative and I know your that relative” and I remember feeling very pumped up about it because his comments made me feel that I had a very well known family. But it was only at that moment –many years later – as I revisited that memory and that occurred to me that the conversation was an etiquette interaction and I was supposed to respond with “Oh, your family – I know your this relative, I know your that relative…” But I didn’t do that and instead I just focused on how great I was. And when I remembered that experience, all of a sudden I could remember all kinds of other things that led away from that moment. So, it’s a question of trying to get to your authentic experience and one of things that allows you to do it is to not impose on your journey of memory a sense of where you’re going with it.
So, my process was that I wasn’t going to think about what I was writing. I didn’t start out by writing something instead I was just remembering something. I had over a thousand pages and it was a thousand pages that I hadn’t looked at because I never read over what I had written in the course of a day. And then after 9/11 my agent said “You should write something. Don’t you have something to write about Afghanistan?” And I thought maybe the time is now. Because at that moment in the wake of 9/11 I was imbued with the sense that there are these two groups of people. They are on different sides of a wall and each one only sees themselves and their concerns and no one sees both sides. I was peculiarly situated. What had most of my life been a curse – this bicultural thing – at that moment it felt like something that I actually needed to apply to the situation – try to tell what I knew. And that’s why I wrote this book.
The Bicultural Curse and Being Normal
LitMinds: Why do you call it a curse?
Tamim: Well, because when you are bicultural in the way that I am and that many young Afghans are experiencing here in America – the curse was that I never felt normal. The curse was that I felt out of place no matter where I was – I was always the guy who wasn’t one of us.
LitMinds: Can you define what being normal is?
Tamim: Normal is – you don’t feel out of place – that’s what it is. And of course, there is a level (of being normal) which is in yourself – accepting –I’ve finally come to understand all the ways in which I don’t fit and that is, in fact, who I am (laughs). Add up all the ways in which I don’t fit and you have Tamim.
LitMinds: Give us an example…what are the ways in which you don’t fit?
Tamim: No, I think that’s not the way to go – I think the way to go at it is to say that often my experience growing up was that when I walked into a room with a bunch of people I felt like they stopped talking because they couldn’t comfortably converse with this guy around. Now on the Afghan side, when I went to school or when I went anyplace outside my household, I felt like an outsider and that’s how people referred to me.
LitMinds: So, you were an outsider in Afghanistan when you were growing up and then you came here and you were an outsider here?
Tamim: Yeah. And when I came here, I was an outsider here and there was so much to know about social relationships. You know how there’s all the unwritten rules, especially when you’re an adolescent. There’s dating and people of different genders get together and they know what to do and you don’t know what to do. I understand now that everyone goes through this (laughs). I thought it was because I was an Afghan guy. And you know in fact when I was growing up in Afghanistan, the rules about interaction with the opposite sex as a teenager was – they were so intense that one was very aware of what one must not or could not do outside with anyone who wasn’t your family. You couldn’t make improper advances which could include even just looking at some woman…or some girl.
LitMinds: So, the cultural rules are really different?
Tamim: They are different. Just to toss something out there – an aspect of marriage is that in Afghanistan, it wasn’t at all uncommon for old guys to marry young women. And one of the reasons is if you’re going to marry you’re going to have to be well situated and you don’t usually get there until you’ve been around for awhile. You know what the flip side is? The flip side of that is that my sister, when she came here, if she was asked for a date by someone who was her age, she felt humiliated. She felt that the only way her status was nourished was being with older guys that were at least fifteen years older and she did in fact marry a guy who was fifteen or twenty years older than her.
LitMinds: Let’s go back to the bit about being bicultural. America is a country of immigrants so at some level, isn’t being bicultural the same as being normal? Because everybody has somewhere in their past, another culture, another society, another set of rules…for some people it’s more and for some people it’s less but as a country of immigrants is there anything that is normal that is not bicultural?
Tamim: Well…yes normal is bicultural here or multicultural, but in fact America has a culture. That culture absorbs into itself some kind of sense of the normalcy of biculturalism and multiculturalism and that’s what American culture consists of but most other cultures are not that way – other cultures are mono-cultural so for someone to grow up that way and be in this soup of biculturalism that’s the opposition – those are the two different things.
In Afghanistan when I was there – there was no other person who was from the west. I was the only one. So my first experience of biculturalism wasn’t being in America and feeling like I had another culture. It was being in Afghanistan and feeling like I had another culture. Now these guys who are here – these Afghan-American guys who are here – you know I think every [person who identifies with a] culture that’s still closely tied to their traditional ways back home probably goes through their version of what Afghan-Americans are going through here. And it’s certainly true that for an Afghan person – man or woman, when they walk through the doors of that house, there is a unified monoculture inside that house and it extends to a network of other houses that are all Afghan. And, there are arranged marriages and they have concerts and their parties at which only the hundred people who are in your family are there.
When these guys go out into high school they find that there is a whole other world out there and they have to change. For a long time I only knew the young folks of the Afghan community as hovering about when I was with their people that were my age. So I’d talk to their mothers and fathers and they’d be there and they seemed like just nice Afghan kids. They were very respectful to elders, they came and served the candy and the tea, you know they didn’t intrude – they did all the things you’re supposed to do. It didn’t occur to me until later that one of my older teenage cousin’s children was bald and he had a gold earring in his ear. And it didn’t occur to me that outside of the house he’s part of some gang and we don’t know what that life is and his parents don’t know…and that’s just a whole other thing.
LitMinds: This teenager was living two parallel lives?
Tamim: Yes! What one of these guys said to me and I think this is really a true thing… He said, “you know you go home and you pretend to be Afghan and you go out there and you pretend to be American and you say to yourself ‘where is it that I’m not pretending?’” And then you ask what is normal? That’s what normal is – where you’re not pretending. And…that absence of normalcy is partly imposed from outside and it’s partly you but you know what you can do if you can’t get to that place where you feel like you’re not pretending? It isn’t enough to say ‘get over it.’
LitMinds: Tell us more about the part that is imposed from you on the outside…
Tamim: Well, you know if you’re a Muslim in this country like an Afghan guy who’s grown up in a Muslim household and you’re inculcated with Muslim ideas and you go out there and you’re in high school and you say “well I’m a Muslim.” There’s no way to explain to someone what that is because the society at large has an idea of what a Muslim is … (laughs)
LitMinds: So, it’s not a favorable idea?
Tamim: It’s not a favorable idea. So, now if you’re an Afghan guy you’re feeling like you don’t have an identity and you’re looking for an authentic identity and rooted-ness, the only place to turn is your background, your family, your homeland, and Islam. So now, you’re in a position where you’re seeking your identity in a way that involves making yourself hated. That’s difficult because then you’re in this tormented search for how to assert that ‘No, I’m a Muslim but that doesn’t make me a bad person.’
Social Contexts and Memory of Civilizations
LitMinds: What is the expectation from ‘normal’ Americans here that is not being met?
Tamim: Partly you’re asking a question from a guy who is able to be as normal as you want – I don’t live an alienated life at all. Nobody looks at me and says alien. I talk like a normal guy and I look like a normal guy. But going back to – what is your question?
LitMinds: Let’s go back to the hypothetical example – you said this Afghan or this Muslim kid goes to school and says I’m Muslim and people start to formulate an impression of what that is and it’s not a favorable impression. It’s not anything he did…it’s just they have formed an impression based on that label because he’s a Muslim. So, the question is – what is a reasonable expectation from these people who are forming an impression? Because it seems that they are doing something that they shouldn’t be doing.
Tamim: Well, now wait a minute…the people, you mean mainstream society is doing something that they shouldn’t be doing? You know social attitudes are not chosen so I don’t know if you can put that kind of judgment on a society…
LitMinds: Aren’t they?
Tamim: No, they’re not. If you observe something like that – what you can do is search for ways to shed more light to introduce more information in the situation. I don’t think the proper thing to say is you guys are being bad and you should be good now – you should love Muslims – you can’t do that. You’ve got what you’ve got in your head and the only thing that’s going to change it is getting more stuff in your head…that’s why I’m writing this book I’m writing now (more on that later).
LitMinds: Allow us to challenge that point of view for a moment – you said social attitudes are not chosen but doesn’t each one of us as an individual make a very conscious and explicit choice of which attitudes we are going to follow? Are we going to be supportive of gay marriage or not? Are we going to be racist or not?
Tamim: I think not. Actually, I think it’s self congratulating of people who aren’t racist to say to people who are racist - ‘you could be like me but you’re not, you’re a lower species of human being, I’m enlightened, you’re not.’ It might be correct but what does that imply? There’s probably more racism in rural Alabama that in suburban San Francisco and I don’t think you can say that well, those people chose to be racists and the people here chose not to – I don’t think that is the case – if it were there would be a sort of homogenous random distribution of racists and non-racists. So obviously there are larger social forces at work here.
LitMinds: So, what do you think forms social attitudes if it’s not individual choices?
Tamim: I think history and the information set that’s available to you has a lot to do with that too. I also think your life situation has a lot to do with it. Most people take on the coloration of those around them. This might seem like I’m going off on a wild tangent here but indulge me for a moment…I was listening to a bunch of teenagers that I was driving around a few years ago. One of them was my daughter. And, my daughter is a very intelligent and independent minded person but, I was overhearing everyone in the back seat talk about cultural artifacts – this actor, that movie, this piece of music. And there was not one shred of dissent or argument there …someone would say “what about so and so…” and they would all react “oh yeah, oh I hate that person…” Then someone else would say “what about this great piece of music…”, and everyone else would react “oh yeah, I love that!” And it’s like – my brother compared them to minnows you know it’s like whoosh… and the little flock goes someplace. So, that’s something that’s in the human community.
LitMinds: Is it the pressure to conform?
Tamim: We have it in us to try to be part of whatever group. We don’t want to be out and isolated on our own. When you’re looking at how to tackle something like racism or ignorant prejudice about gay marriage, I just feel like the information and …working to change concrete material conditions– these are the things that are going to change attitudes. Not so much becoming a block of your own attitude, [but] judgmentally attacking another block of attitudes.
LitMinds: That’s a good point. These social attitudes relate to another very interesting concept you raise in the book, you called it “social memory” of the Islamic world. Let’s explore that a bit more – what is social memory of a billion people?
Tamim: I think that we all live in a narrative and not simply in a physical reality. We live in a narrative in our own live, of a group, of our sense of where the world is going…and I think that people who interact more with one another than they do with outsiders, begin to build a common narrative. I would assert that different people can be situated at different places with respect to a common shared narrative. Some people can say they’re the master race “yes this is true and we’re the master race.” And somebody else can say “yes this narrative is true and you guys are the oppressors and we’re the victims.” But they’re all talking about this one big narrative. And, I think there is one narrative that is commonly perceived in the Western world – or that people in most western societies have some consciousness of that. And, I think there’s another one in the Eastern world that I think pertains to Islam. What I would say about the social memory of those billion people – is that there are mythological elements and there is some arc of what the great events of history were and some sense of the drive that informs the forward progress of civilization that people have a common sense of. Whether they are in Indonesia or Nigeria – if they are Muslim – because they continually brush up against the same stories. Stories that are not even known here for the most part. That’s kind of what I mean by social memory and I think there is a level at which we’re operating now as if we have a conflict between the Muslim world and the western world. Whereas it seems to me the more accurate description is we are in the same space having conflict internally and we don’t realize we are not talking about the same stuff.
LitMinds: It seem like you are saying that there are two sets of social memories – western set of social memories and an Islamic set of social memories and they are different. They might have the same events, but the events are interpreted differently because of different social contexts.
Tamim: Yes, they are interpreted differently and in certain areas they overlap so that we’ve been a part of the same event we’ve been in. The Crusades for example are a part of what happened in the middle east – which in other places is considered the middle west. Where you are standing shapes how you might be talking about the same situation.
LitMinds: Given how these stories can be so different in different cultures and on different sides and over time the stories get more entrenched into a kind of self-reinforcing mechanism – how do we get beyond that? How do we get to a shared understanding between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Or the West and Islam? Which is more about what you said – it’s about conflicts which are in us, not within civilization…Or do we even get there?
Tamim: Well…I’m busy writing a narrative through Islamic eyes and I’m putting that out there just so people can see how it would be to have come to this place from a whole different narrative. I haven’t quite finished it and what I want to try to say in my last chapter is – I’m not saying this is the real history of the world either - this is another parochial history. There’s a lot of these parochial histories. What we have to do now, my point of departure is [reflect on] our sense of the history of the world. How we got here now. So our parochial history which is here now is modern industrial society with the U.S. leading the way. And ideally someday the whole world will be democratic and middle class.
LitMinds: And Capitalistic?
Tamim: Yes, Capitalistic! And technologically advanced, that’s the ideal. And we’re going there…people who aren’t going there, are called underdeveloped. And Islam has a whole other narrative which has been submerged but it has been there for 1,400 years. And what I’m saying is neither of those is really the history of the world. Where we are right now is we’re on the edge of a global civilization which has been constructed out of a number of big rivers which have come together. There’s the Chinese which is this sort of impulse, there’s the Islamic impulse, there’s this western impulse – there’s all these things which are now getting intermixed.
Socio-Politics of the War in Afghanistan
LitMinds: There’s something I want to explore – and this starts to get into some of the politics. You said, “Here in Iraq as in the world as a whole, what we’re fighting is not an entity but a condition.”
Tamim: I said that?
LitMinds: Yes, it’s an article you wrote on your website. What condition are we fighting with the War on Terror?
Tamim: First of all let’s talk about entity because entity is what frames our discussion. We talked about this entity called Al-Qaeda. And the way we talk about it is – ‘if we can get the officers and the government of Al-Qaeda and find their capital… we will have solved something.’
We talk that same way about the Taliban Things keep happening in Afghanistan – the news reports say it was Taliban remnants for years and years now. How many remnants are there in this thing and who is the Taliban?
When you use that phrase, it makes it seem like it’s an entity like a country or like an organization like UNESCO or like a corporation or they’ve got a structure and a chain of command. There’s no such thing!
You get rid of some bunch of Taliban and five or six guys in the next village, who know all about what Talibanism is all about, get together and say – ‘let’s go do something.’ And there you have another Taliban remnant who weren’t Taliban yesterday. When I say it’s a condition we’re fighting – the thing that I’m most aware of – that what best describes the condition is the absence of stable social networks. It’s societies that have been atomized to the level that individuals or small groups can make decisions about what they’re going to do and they don’t have to ask anybody about it.
What informs their decisions about what they’re going to do? Well, there’s the ideology that’s in the air, that’s all there is. I think back to Afghanistan and people say there was always a lot of impulse to violence in the Afghan personality. So, why wasn’t there a lot of actual violence?
Those Afghans are full of macho – I’m gonna prove myself important man who will kick your ass – and there’s a lot of that around. Why wasn’t everybody always kicking everybody’s ass? That’s because you don’t want to shame your family – you don’t want to have to explain what you’re doing to your aunts. You’re part of so many networks that you have obligations to – and that’s what counterbalances this other thing around the different impulses to violence.
When you take a society and dice it and slice it and destroy the social networks, there are people who don’t have social responsibility to anyone and nobody before whom they feel shamed. So now, anything can happen.
In Afghanistan that certainly happened – it was a long process but it started out when the communists invaded and they bombed the countryside and villages were disrupted and the women and children went out to fight. And, there was all this social structure that existed before and now it doesn’t exist at all.
The whole family was completely atomized and distributed across the landscape. If you go to the refugee camps you see hordes and hordes of children - they’re all boys, and they’re just roaming the streets. What social obligations, values or anything like that are going to restrain those boys? It’s only what the other boys tell them, and there’s no other thing.
So, I see a lot of the horror of the violence that’s come out as being symptoms of this atomization of social structures. The worst of this stuff has come out of failed states and in those places it has been distributed down throughout the society. Lebanon is an example of such a state that was destroyed long ago and all the different factions fought each other and the society has been atomized.
LitMinds: So, can you summarize what condition are we fighting?
Tamim: I’m saying if it’s a condition that’s producing the violence but your framework is that there is an enemy and an entity here whom you must fight, then your fighting is aimed at destroying the ability of the enemy to organize – that’s what you do in a war. If France fights Germany, what they try to do is get to the capital and destroy their ability to communicate, disrupt their networks and organization, make them disorganized, then you’ve got them. So now, if you’re fighting a war where you’re framework tells you that what you must do to win is destroy the ability of the enemy to organize but what’s actually producing the violence is this disorganization of their social networks! So, what you’re doing is contributing to the thing that you don’t like.
LitMinds: So, you are saying that we’re focused on the wrong problem. Our energy should be focused on helping create stability and organization in these societies, and instead we are making them more disorganized.
Tamim: That’s right!
LitMinds: Let’s talk about Afghanistan and the US decision to go into Afghanistan in 2001. We read your letter, the famous day-after-9/11 letter, and in that you were questioning the value of going to war in Afghanistan – you were saying things like “to get to Afghanistan we’d have to go through Pakistan and who has the stomach for that” and “if Bin Laden can polarize the world into Islam and West, he’s got a billion soldiers.” So, it seems you were basically against US going into Afghanistan. Yet six years later, you have an article on your website in which you are basically saying, “we left too soon.” It’s like leaving after the coin toss in the football game. So those two positions seem to be contradictory. Should we have not gone in or did we leave too soon?
Tamim: You ask tough questions! It’s a very complicated question – we left too soon because we didn’t stay for anything that resembled reconstruction. The military action in Afghanistan right in the beginning, I think was – maybe I’m going to change my mind while I speak here – I think it was okay. What they did right at the beginning and I’ll break down what we actually did right at the beginning because that has been obscured somewhat.
For about a week or something, America went in and bombed all these targets. Bad idea! That was the thing I was saying was a bad idea – bad idea.
Then, they stopped doing that and they began to give support to the northern alliance and the northern alliance is what actually took Kabul and they did something else; they went to Pakistan and the put the kind of pressure they were able to put because they controlled the purse strings for ISI and said you guys have to stop supporting the Taliban. The moment ISI pulled back on that, the Taliban knew they were done. So, that was a pretty nuanced kind of response and it wasn’t the thing that I was warning against which was a hundred thousand troops pouring across the border through Pakistan. They did do that though – they just didn’t do it in Afghanistan – they did it in Iraq. And wasn’t I right? look what happened in Iraq?
LitMinds: Let’s go back to Afghanistan, and tell us why you think we left too soon?
Tamim: Yeah okay but no I want to make that point – that’s the thing that they did in Iraq and look how that turned out? Now let’s get back to Afghanistan…when I went back in 2002, people were ready to get going. They thought the war was over and judiciously applied reconstruction aid would have created a renaissance there. So many people were ready to get involved and had creative ideas about rebuilding and they knew what they needed and wanted. When I went into the villages, people would take me someplace and say this is the piece of land we used to grow this and that on, now we need one of those deep wells here and we could grow this and this and this but we need a little money, do you have a little money?
I had to say “No, I don’t have any money.” There was that other guy - I talked about him. He had a plan to start a perfume factory or a cosmetics factory because he knew that there was going to be a market for that. Which there was – this beauty school idea has taken off. There were all these people but what actually happened was – the only reconstruction aid that came in basically was big ticket reconstruction for like the roads – which didn’t happen until there was a moment where they needed some progress to report to the Congress and then they quickly built the roads and they falling apart already. The reconstruction aid goes to Afghanistan, I heard from Ambassador Jawad, the Afghanistan Ambasador, it’s the rule of that reconstruction aid - that three quarters of that dollars be spent in America.
LitMinds: Really!
Tamim: Yes. Who goes over there – it’s the foreign contractors and the engineers who go over there, and they make something like $200,000 a year and all of them have private body guards which I don’t blame them – who would go there without high priced body guards? Those guys make an enormous amount of money and the Afghans who do the work – they make five to ten dollars a week. Then there’s all this stuff happening with setting up private corporations in Afghanistan; they’ve got a private university, a mall, many restaurants; the Chinese have come in and put in all these whorehouses – that’s reconstruction I guess, I don’t know…and meanwhile people are earning, police officers are earning like 50 bucks a month and postal workers 30 bucks a month and even the members of parliament are paid nothing.
If you have a house, you try to find a foreign guy that will rent your house and then you’d charge what the market could possibly bear – which is a lot – because they’ve got plenty of money. That drags up the prices of everything else so no one can afford to live in Kabul. The only way you can possibly afford it is to engage in some sort of illegal activity like drugs and/or take bribes - probably both. So now, nothing gets done unless you have money to pay for all your permits and stuff like that. Kabul and the reconstruction program overall has become non-functional.
Have you read this thing? (Tamim excitedly waives a well worn library copy of Naomi Klein’s book - “The Shock Doctrine”) The Shock Doctrine is totally happening in Afghanistan – it’s happening everywhere but it’s happening a lot in Afghanistan – disaster capitalism, you know. A country has been destroyed and what has happened is an opportunity for people to make money out of the destruction there and that money in Afghanistan mainly consists of taxing Americans and laundering the money into the private corporations that are allegedly rebuilding Afghanistan. And it all gets banked right here. So, that’s why I say that we left too soon. The situation there is getting worse and worse.
LitMinds: But the public seems to think that this is the war that has gone better. It seems that you are saying we botched the reconstruction effort? And continue to botch it?
Tamim: Well, I don’t know if you can say botch because I don’t know if there was a serious attempt at reconstruction.
LitMinds: But there has been a lot of money going in there…and the taxpayers have been funding it with the expectation that some good was going to come out of it. We think that’s the expectation the people at large have – the taxpayers, the voters, all of us common people.
Tamim: Right! But when you said botched, it’s language that seems to imply we tried but we made mistakes – I don’t know if they’re mistakes. People deliberately constructed an avenue to make money and there was no mistake there. And the taxpayers have no control over what happens with the tax money. That happens in the government. And the government increasingly is a contracting agency for private companies. I tell you everybody has got to read this book (Shock Doctrine). I have noticed a lot of things over the years that puzzled me because you try to analyze a situation that looks like it’s being botched and you can’t imagine how they could make such stupid mistakes but I read this book and I see that oh, there’s no botching going on here, this is all deliberate – that was the plan! I don’t know who’s complicit in that than the government. You know, the soldiers are not complicit, these troops that go over there - they learn what their job is and they are told to do this thing and they’re in a dangerous situation and they’re trying to do the best they can. The troops have nothing to do with it and even the commanders have nothing to do with it. It’s all on the political side.
Writing Career and Focus on Helping Other Writers
LitMinds: Let’s talk a bit about your writing career – tell us abut the writer’s workshop that you’ve been involved with.
Tamim: That workshop has been operating since about 1946. It’s a peculiar institution because it’s never had a structure or an organization or anything. It’s just people come and somebody leads it and it meets every Tuesday from seven to nine. That’s been the regular thing from 1946.
So I joined maybe fifteen years ago and the guy, who was running it, died and someone else ran it for a year and when he left people said why don’t you run it and so I started running it. Which basically means, showing up every Tuesday with the key. But it’s gained a certain solidity since I’ve been running it, it’s changed over the years as to what it is. And at one point, it was in the library and anyone who walked by could just sort of come in and now it meets in an art gallery and I feel like it’s self selecting.
The writers who come there already think of themselves as writers and so that’s a self selecting process. And since the quality of writing is pretty good, people come feeling like they belong in this company and those who don’t feel they belong don’t come back. And all we do is we get together and people read their work aloud, and they get feedback from whoever’s there, and we go on to the next guy.
LitMinds: So it’s just a way to share your work and get immediate feedback from other writers?
Tamim: Yes. And it’s had little offshoot groups where people get together and say, why don’t we start Wednesday night group and we can deal with stuff at greater length or people who were writing science fiction, got together separately. Those little groups form and dissolve because they meet in somebody’s house and their life, for some reason, is limited.
And this group, it’s always met in a public place, it’s never been in a private home and we have three simple rules – 1) You can’t read more than six pages, 2) When the feedback starts you can’t talk, and 3) You can’t bring back something that you’ve brought once, it has to be something different, you can’t edit it and bring it back.
LitMinds: That’s the three rules. Anybody can come in?
Tamim: Anybody can come.
LitMinds: We are surprised there isn't a long line around the block – of all the new and emerging writers waiting to get in and get some quality feedback.
Tamim: Well, once in a while it swells and it gets to be like twenty people are coming and people have to wait weeks and weeks to read and so then it collapses and gets back down to eight or nine. Often people come, they attend every week for a about a year or two and then they drift off and come back every once in a while. There is an ever growing sort of penumbra of writers around the workshop. In recent years a lot of people have been publishing. Originally, that wasn’t a very prominent aspect of the workshop.
LitMinds: Let’s talk more about your next book. Do you think that you’re particularly well suited to bring the Islamic version of world history to the West?
Tamim: No, I’m not the best suited but I’m the only one who is doing it. Many people have said “Excuse me, I don’t mean to offend you but why you?” (laughs) And, I think it partly comes from the same place that West of Kabul came from…you know I grew up in the Muslim world – my first exposure to history was that world history – I have a sort of deep memory of some other sense of world history that’s out there. And, I’ve been involved as a person who’s spent many years in educational publishing. With the prevailing doctrine of world history being taught in America. So that’s my point of departure and it says “wait a minute, there is this other way to look at everything…”
So, I’m just getting it from other people’s work. What I’m saying in this book is not at all difficult or controversial for anyone to know. Lot’s of people have written little bits and pieces of this and I’m not trying to assert something that most scholars would disagree with – it’s just that I’m putting it all together.
LitMinds: What part of the writing/ publishing process are you in and when can we expect to see the finished book?
Tamim: Well, I’ve just finished the first draft. I probably should deliver it to my editor pretty soon. It’s scheduled to come out in spring of ’09 and I hope it does because I always like to get them out there fast once they are written. I don’t have a title yet. My title is “World History Through Islamic Eyes.” And my editor said, “No, that’s the subtitle, what’s the title?” I’ve played with “Crescent Moon.” I’ve called it “The Medina Project.” “Interrupted Journey” was there for awhile but I think that’s passed away. I was playing with “From India to Istanbul” to give it a thematic connection to my other book.
LitMinds: Last question about the title of “West of Kabul, East of New York.” What is west of Kabul, east of New York?
Tamim: Well I wanted to first evoke the idea that you’re between these two places; you’re too east for New York and you’re too west for Kabul. So you’re not really in either place. And then I also liked the title because there’s a fairy tale called “East of the Sun, West of the Moon?” And I just thought it gave a certain mythological flavor to it.
LitMinds: Thank you for your time and for speaking with us. We look forward to seeing you at the San Francisco events for the One City One Book program.
