AE: I'd written 100 pages prior to September 11, and then September 11 happened and I got a little nervous about the material in the book, and I thought, "Who's going to want to read about Arabs now?" I had lunch with my agent, and he said, "It doesn't matter. The book isn't political." When he said that, I thought, "Why isn't it?" He said it to be supportive, to make me not worry, but at the same time, I thought, "It should be. This is a political situation."
So that comment struck me and then we invaded Afghanistan. So all these Gulf War people were on TV, you know, Colin Powell, etc., and I was watching TV and thinking, this is so strange, they were all the same players from the first war. Then I started thinking about the first Gulf War. I would speak to my father -- we were doing OK during that period. My roommate and I would get scared about the war. I mean, do you remember? We didn't know anything about a war.
AC: Especially if you were of draft age.
AE: Yeah, what could happen? What does this mean? So I was just freaking out and I would call my father, because he was so gung ho about the war. He was like, this is great. I thought he was kind of crazy, but I was intrigued. I mean, my father, when he is right, he's right. Even if he ends up not being right. He's so certain, it can be comforting, if you need to be comforted. So I would call him and he would say these crazy things, how he hated Saddam, and I started thinking about that, and I thought, that would be interesting to have a guy who, like my father during the Gulf War, who had this kind of Pro-American attitude....
And I'm really glad you say that about that character, because I really like Daddy in the book. I think he's charming. He has specific ideas; he does a very bad job of implementing his plan for his daughter, and how she should grow up, but at the same time, I think he has some sympathy for her and he has moments of pain, and he defends her at times -- granted, it might suit his purposes. And he gets overwrought at the end. He doesn't know what to do. I wanted to come up with a character who looks at a young girl's sexuality and says, "I don't know what to do. This is just not something I know anything about. And it makes me very uncomfortable." Meanwhile, the more uncomfortable he gets, the lonelier she is. And lonely kids are a bad idea, because that's when they start making bad decisions. And that's what the first book is about: women who make bad decisions.
In some ways, I think "Towelhead" is a kind of prequel to the book of stories. What would one of my characters in that first book, what's one example, one possibility for how someone could turn out like that? That they wouldn't take care of themselves. They would make decisions based on short-term gratification. Jasira is completely and utterly in need of constant short-term gratification. She has no ability to see long-term; she's in too much pain. She's too depressed. So every decision, she may know it's not a good decision, but that doesn't matter. She would like to have love and affection, and she would like to feel that someone doesn't find her disgusting, and the neighbor and Thomas, disturbingly, fill those roles, those needs.
But I remember in my own life, having to learn about long-term thinking. I'm about to do some short-term thinking. That's my last vice. I shop like a maniac. It's soothing. It calms me. I don't even have to buy anything...It's very strange. I've got to stop doing it.
