Contemporary Authors

• Live from Cairo Scribner/Simon & Schuster, Inc. (New York, NY), 2017

1. Live from Cairo : a novel LCCN 2017010556 Type of material Book Personal name Bassingthwaighte, Ian, author. Main title Live from Cairo : a novel / Ian Bassingthwaighte. Edition First Scribner hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2017. ©2017 Description 323 pages : map ; 24 cm ISBN 9781501146879 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER PS3602.A8492 L59 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Amazon -

  Ian Bassingthwaigthe was a Fulbright Grantee in Egypt in 2009, where he worked in a legal aid office that served refugees from Iraq, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. He has been honored with Hopwood Awards for both novel writing and short fiction. He was also named as a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Tin House, The Rumpus, and many other publications. Live from Cairo is his first novel.

• Michigan Quarterly Review - http://www.michiganquarterlyreview.com/2017/08/on-live-from-cairo-an-interview-with-ian-bassingthwaighte/

  On “Live from Cairo:” An Interview with Ian Bassingthwaighte
  by Lauren PrastienAug 08, 2017in Interviews

  Ian Bassingthwaighte’s stunning debut novel, Live from Cairo (Scribner, July 2017), set during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, follows an unlikely team’s efforts to reunite Dalia, an Iraqi refugee living in Cairo, with her husband Omran, who was resettled to Boston without her. After Dalia’s application for U.S. refugee status is rejected by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, or UNHCR, her American attorney — the bullheaded but compassionate Charlie — devises a plan to bend the law and get his client to the United States. He recruits his best friend and coworker Aos, an Egyptian translator engaged with the revolution. And, after much persuasion, he convinces the Iraqi-American UNHCR employee who rejected Dalia’s application in the first place to participate in the ploy. Her name is Hana, a new member of the staff, who battles daily with her increasing disillusionment with a job that reduces people to paperwork and harrowing testimonies to checklists.

  But the team is not merely battling a broken system, it is posed against time itself. Omran is prepared to return to Cairo to reunite with Dalia, thus relinquishing his asylum status and returning to a city where neither he nor his wife can work or maintain a standard of living. The dilemma is practically O’Henryian. Dalia and Omran’s love is both their solace — this reviewer relished every affable, tender phone call between the two — and their potential undoing. It is, as Charlie muses, not “something they could eat or live inside.”

  But the novel is as much about its central couple as it is a searing rumination on the ways in which humanitarian crises reduce their victims to statistics and exceptional anecdotes. It is about bureaucratic futility, friendship, loss, and the complicated line between right and wrong. Brutal, arresting, and heartfelt, Live from Cairo spins out a tale of deft messiness with unflinching prose and a surprising dash of humor.

  Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to Ian Bassingthwaighte about non-traditional love stories, his work as a multi-genre artist, and how his experience at a legal aid nonprofit in Egypt informed the writing of Live From Cairo.

  I suppose we should start with the essential first book interview question: when did you know you had to write this book? Or how did the idea or impetus occur to you?

  I went to Egypt on a grant, so was supposed to be writing — or researching, at least — a novel from day one. I was young and passionate, but less than informed; I hardly had a topic, much less a story. Weeks passed. I spent most of my time drinking beer and otherwise being an insufferable twenty-something. Then, serendipity. I found myself, having no legal background whatsoever, interning at a legal aid nonprofit in Cairo, where I conducted intake interviews for primarily Iraqi and Sudanese refugees. This involved compressing myriad, often sprawling tales of woe into five-page testimonies. “On October 3rd, while returning home from the cafe, Mr. X was kidnapped at gun point; he was shot once in the leg. Other injuries sustained during his capture include…” — followed by a list of tortures so creative and severe that it felt cruel to put them in ink. Like writing them down would prevent the client’s memory from fading.

  At some point during those months, I found my story. Or I found the problem around which my story was built: a resettlement system so flawed that it ceased to function at the required scale, leaving most refugees to linger indefinitely in camps, slums, tent cities, or impoverished neighborhoods that disappear into the urban sprawl. Those unable to endure the stasis, the boredom, the lack of resources have just one option: to make perilous journeys of their own accord — across seas, across deserts — with the faint hope that their “illegal” migration might end in some kind of recognizable life, should they not perish en route.

  I was unprepared for this kind of sorrow. And must admit I thought briefly about leaving. But that sorrow came to have a purpose in my life. It made me angry. Which made me write. Just a story, at first. But one that resisted every attempted ending until it was 336 pages long.

  Your novel delves rather specifically and graphically into the violence enacted against the characters attempting to navigate the resettlement process, Dalia and Omran. I found it aligned interestingly with the prominent theme of desensitization. Given your experience of transcribing these testimonies, did the inclusion of these descriptions feel particularly important to you?

  It wasn’t until someone else — in this case, my mother — read the book that I realized there was anything graphic about it. I remember her saying something like, “This torture stuff is … not pleasant.” But it was normal. An inescapable part of my clients’ lives; and, as a result, my life. The psychological impact was swift and unsettling. Even in the comparatively short time I spent at the legal aid project, I could feel myself being hollowed out. “You were hit in the face with a tire iron? Okay. Let me write that down. You were electrocuted with a battery? Okay. Let me write that down.”

  I don’t want to inflict this kind of second-hand trauma on the reader, but feel its important to convey torture the way victims seem to remember it. It’s more than just a physical injury. It’s a smell. A voice. Usually a man’s voice. It’s a feeling of shame. Of utter powerlessness. It’s wanting to die, but not being able to. It’s a vivid memory that grows wildly over time. It’s the loss of autonomy. It’s a scar that still hurts even years later. To look away from that reality would be to inflict yet another cruelty. It denies the victim a witness.

  At its core, Live from Cairo is a love story, maybe even a cluster of love stories — romantic, familial, platonic, etc. But Dalia and Omran have already been together for quite some time when the novel begins, and we don’t learn their “origin story” for quite a while. They’re invested in each other, and the reader is immediately invested in them as well, such that the book explores the lengths both the couple and other parties will go to in order to reunite or preserve that relationship. I feel as though I can name so many novels and stories either about the inception of a romance — two characters falling in love and then having to beat the odds — or otherwise about an already established relationship’s decline, but not all that many about endurance, if you will. What interested you in this sort of a narrative?

  I can see why falling into or out of love is so attractive to storytellers; those spaces are, by their nature, dramatic. Whereas a relationship between its inception and death — the period in which those involved are more or less content to be together — is harder to make interesting. Unless, of course, there is an immense external pressure on the relationship. Some mortal threat. At which point the love story becomes a survival story. A figurative matter of life and death. Or literal, as the case may be.

  This is not to say that my primary interest here is craft. Or that I was even thinking about craft when I wrote their marriage. I was more interested in giving Omran and Dalia a quiet, perhaps even boring life. What the reader might recognize as “normal.” Two people in a functional marriage. Who plan to have between one and several kids. Who have a cat. And a history. Who will, under the right circumstance, argue. But not degrade each other. The point is to illustrate one of the many unseen costs of war. Refugees were, at one time, just civilians. People with lives. People with families. The theft of that normalcy just tears me up.

  Which brings me to the discrepancy between how rich and privileged countries view resettlement and what resettlement actually is. It is not a favor. It is not a generosity. It is not going out of our way to rescue people. It is a moral obligation. An attempt, in some small way, to return what we — the U.S. having a long history of profiting from the conflict business — were party to stealing in the first place: the normal, boring lives of millions of people who just want the right to work, to love, to move, to marry.

  It feels reductive sometimes to say that writing generates empathy, and it’s infuriating to consider that this sort of empathy isn’t always reflexive for people. But art is ultimately a point of access as much as it is a point of expression. In addition to being a writer, you’re also a photographer. Has photography affected the ways in which you approach writing, either in terms of subject matter or craft?

  In lieu of giving you an answer, I’m going to give you an example. A few weeks ago, I put together a gallery in which my photos of Egypt were captioned with notes about or lines from my novel. (You can view that gallery here.) One of those photos (below) shows the Saladin Citadel and, below that, a vast sea of apartment buildings capped with myriad satellite dishes. The lines paired with this image come from the first chapter of the book: Hana, standing on her balcony, looks out at the city. It’s the first time she sees Cairo in daylight. She expects to see signs of protest, conflict, battle. But all she sees is a city that’s surprisingly well-connected to space. The odd sight brings about a strange feeling. One that is actually some comfort to Hana. It indicates that she is somewhere new. Somewhere far away from home. The reader will interpret this as they will, but may wonder: what is she running from?

  Here it’s worth mentioning that the best writing advice I ever received came from a photographer. “See what others don’t. Or don’t want to.” This to reveal some heretofore unseen element. Some brightness. Some darkness. Some truth.

  Though the book is not told in the first person, you successfully embody the perspectives of various characters in the close third whose backgrounds, viewpoints and personalities are vastly different. Did you find entering into any of these characters’ perspectives surprisingly easy or unexpectedly challenging?

  In a 2012 interview with The Atlantic, Junot Diaz, in reference to men writing from a female perspective, said, “The baseline is, you suck.” Privilege gets in the way, like a layer that’s opaque in only one direction. Such that I can’t see women as clearly as they see me. This dynamic extends beyond gender. To race, for example. To religion, sexual orientation, country of origin, country of residence, class, and so on. Any defining characteristic subject to an imbalance of power. Being straight, white, male, solvent, and American means that seeing clearly requires a lot of intentional work.

  For that reason, most of the perspectives in Live from Cairo, for the possible exception of Charlie, were hard for me. I had to shed presumptions I didn’t even know I had. Presumptions that resulted in major character flaws. Why in early drafts did Charlie have a rich interior life while Dalia was no more than the sum of her suffering? A victim. A shadow. It took years of fighting and falling in love with her character to make her real. The same was true for Hana, Aos, and Omran. As Diaz notes, this process requires “consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture.” A culture that demeans women. That dehumanizes Arabs. That demonizes Muslims. That belittles the poor.

  Working against this gravitational pull, insofar as writing a novel is concerned, requires seeking out readers who are on the other side of the opaque layer. It requires trusting them when they say your character is poorly drawn or that your portrayal is misogynistic. It requires silencing that part of yourself that would rush to your own defense. “Change it,” I had to tell myself almost every day for the last seven years. Each time with more fear that I would never finish.

  You’ve called up two really great pieces of advice/guidelines here, from your photographer friend to Junot Diaz. Were there other writers, artists or works that informed your process of writing and revising Live from Cairo?

  There are four authors whose works appear in Live from Cairo: Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany, two of Egypt’s most regarded novelists; then Jalal al-Din Rumi and Hafez of Shiraz, two of Persia’s most regarded poets. I wouldn’t say they directly informed my process, except that every revision seemed to include at least one additional quote from or reference to these authors. They came along at the right time in my life and will, if for no other reason, stay with me on account of that. I would also credit Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies for inspiring me to write about immigration in the first place. It took such hold of my imagination. It followed me to Egypt. It reminded me why I was there.

  Thank you so much for answering these questions. To wrap up, do you see yourself writing about Egypt after this novel?

  I won’t say never, but I feel like there are so many contemporary Egyptian authors who are better equipped to write Egypt’s story as it continues to unfold. I was there at a particular time, doing particular work. That’s not carte blanche to write about Egypt in other contexts. Plus, there’s another novel idea that’s been rolling around in my head for a while now. It’s very different than Live from Cairo. Post-apocalyptic, in fact. Though it is, in a way, still about immigration. Who gets to move. Who gets to live.

  Find out more about Bassingthwaighte’s work at igbass.com, or follow him on Twitter @iangbass.

• Midwestern Gothiv - http://midwestgothic.com/2017/07/interview-ian-bassingthwaighte/

  INTERVIEW: IAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTE

  Ian Bassingthwaigthe author photoMidwestern Gothic staffer Meghan Chou talked with author Ian Bassingthwaighte about his book Live From Cairo, perspectives on the refugee crisis, the psychological toll of his work, and more.

  **

  Meghan Chou: What’s your connection to the Midwest?

  Ian Bassingthwaighte: I was born in Minnesota and lived for a few years in Iowa, but moved to the West with my family at such a young age that I don’t have substantial memories of either state. Just vignettes. Blurry, almost dream-like recollections about a neighbor, a yard, a street. I didn’t come back to the region for more than twenty years, after I was fortunate enough to have been accepted into the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. This was in 2013. I spent the next two years in Ann Arbor and another two in Ypsilanti. Though my novel isn’t, as the title makes clear, set in the Midwest, much of it was written there. In my apartment, in the library, in the Rackham Building. This shows in small, but important ways. One of my characters is from Dearborn, for example. That character’s mother fled Iraq for Michigan, and ended up working in the library at Wayne State. These choices weren’t exactly conscious; real life just had a way of leaking into my work.

  MC: Live From Cairo takes place in 2011 after the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak as Egypt erupts into riots. We follow the struggles of Dalia, an Iraqi refugee seeking asylum in the United States with the hopes of joining her husband in Boston. Live From Cairo unveils the ironies of wartime and bureaucracy in the modern Middle East just as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 exposed the logical fallacies during World War II. How were you inspired by Catch-22 and what ironies particular to the conflict in the Middle East, and Cairo at the time, did you want to bring attention to?

  IB: One of the many quotes from Catch-22 that I love: “The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa.” I love it because it reminds me how ill-equipped government and bureaucracy tends to be in A.) identifying the problem and B.) solving it. Take, for example, the refugee crisis. Western countries, which have been starting or exacerbating conflicts in the Middle East for generations, collectively bemoan the violence in the region, pass it off as a religious issue, and all but shut their borders when refugees, who’ve fled their home countries not by choice but by necessity, show up at the figurative door in search of respite. “Go away!” is the rallying cry of the Western world. “Keep your problems to yourself!” It’s absurd. We make refugees, then punish them for existing. It would be worth all the years it took to write this book if even one person who couldn’t see that before reading was thereafter able to.

  Live from Cairo book cover by Ian Bassingthwaighte

  MC: Hana, a resettlement officer for the United Nations Refugee Agency, and Charlie, a lawyer who works for the Refugee Relief Project, are two characters from very different backgrounds who have a large influence on Dalia’s fate. Both want to help refugees, but since only a limited number of cases can have a good outcome, the decision mostly rests on the power of the individual’s story. How do Hana’s and Charlie’s attitudes toward the refugee crisis change after they meet Dalia and hear her story?

  IB: I can’t say too much about that without ruining the plot of the book. What I can say: even stubborn minds will change under the right circumstances. Arriving at those circumstances is largely what this book is about.

  MC: Live From Cairo has a diverse cast of characters, including the aforementioned Dalia, Hana, and Charlie, as well as Aos — a protester in Tahrir Square, interpreter for refugees, and Charlie’s friend. How did you create distinct voices for these characters and what perspectives on the refugee crisis do each bring to the story?

  IB: Writing believable characters is easier when you’ve born witness to people like them. That’s why I’m so thankful for my travels, for having worked in an office like Charlie’s, for having met, talked to, and befriended very real people who filled the roles likes the ones I’ve written. Lawyers, interns, translators, UNHCR employees, and so on. Having that abundant resource—thousands of memories derived from a powerful, if also painful experience—makes all the difference. There’s less burden on the imagination.

  It’s interesting, too, that you ask about the different perspectives each character has on the refugee crisis. The book was designed with that question in mind. Omran, who was lucky enough to have been resettled, is nevertheless stuck in limbo. He’s waiting for his wife, who’s stuck in Egypt. Her lawyer, Charlie, is stuck trying to help them. The inadequacies of the system provide no room to move. Aos, Charlie’s only friend and translator, is stuck between a refugee crisis at work and a failed revolution in the streets literally surrounding the office. Hana, the UNHCR employee, is stuck between her desire to help and her inability. The rules make it impossible for her to act. Though these perspectives are different, they all share a common thread: an overwhelming sense of futility. No matter where you’re standing when you look at the resettlement system, you see a process that doesn’t work as it should. This brings us to the plot’s driving question: how far will the characters go to circumnavigate that broken system?

  MC: In 2009, you served as a grantee of the Fulbright Program (an international exchange program dedicated to raising awareness of global issues). As a part of the program, you worked at a legal aid office in Egypt, helping refugees from Iraq, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. How did your time in Egypt influence your portrayal and understanding of the struggles of refugees from the Middle East?

  IB: More than just influencing my portrayal and understanding of the refugee crisis, it fundamentally changed my understanding of who refugees are. These are not people without hope, without humor, without light. These are people with lives in front of them. Futures, if we dare call them that. Characters who were cast in that role had to be round, had to be complicated. No empty shells. No victims who weren’t also something else. A father. A mother. A husband. A wife. An aspiring dancer. Something.

  I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the psychological toll of the work. The New York Times cited the rate of clinical depression among aid workers at double that of American adults. Experience tells me the real number is higher. But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is this: the work never really left my body. Writing this novel has been one way of handling that. So the job was more than just an influence; it was also the impetus.

  MC: In addition to writing, you have had photographs published in magazines such as National Geographic. One particular series features photos of Egypt and the Middle East. How did the process of framing the cities and landscapes affect your portrayal of Egypt in Live From Cairo?

  IB: Photography is more than just a visual reference. At least, if you’re shooting the photos yourself. Then the ostensibly static images contain smells, sounds, tastes, feelings. They are keys to memories locked away by time. (This is where I admit how long it took me to write Live from Cairo—7 years.) I needed some way to keep Egypt with me after I left. Besides reading and reminiscing with friends, photography was all I had. I suppose, too, that photography affects how I see the world and, by extension, how I describe it. My eyes, and so my pen, are drawn to singular details that reflect the nature of some larger place. Why describe an entire kitchen when you can just describe ants crawling in the sugar bowl? The reader’s imagination will extrapolate the desired shabbiness.

  MC: In the past, you have published mostly short stories and nonfiction, so Live From Cairo is your first full-length novel. What advice do you have for writers transitioning from short fiction to longer pieces?

  IB: There’s a song I like by First Aid Kit in which they sing, “Now, so much I know that things just don’t grow if you don’t bless them with your patience.” I suggest every budding novelist take that line to heart.

  MC: What’s next for you?

  IB: I’ve taken a few tentative steps toward a second novel. I’m still interested in immigration, but with an eye toward the future: how borders might look, for example, in a post-apocalyptic environment. Anything else I say about it will almost certainly change. It’s just an idea at this point. A few dozen pages of chicken scratch.

  **

  Ian Bassingthwaigthe was a Fulbright Grantee in Egypt in 2009, where he worked in a legal aid office that served refugees from Iraq, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. He has been honored with Hopwood Awards for both novel writing and short fiction. He was also named as a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. His work has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, Tin House, The Rumpus, and many other publications. Live from Cairo is his first novel.

• Bookwitty - https://www.bookwitty.com/text/interview-ian-bassingthwaighte-author-live-from-cairo/5a0acc9b50cef74044439671

  An Interview With Ian Bassingthwaighte, Author of Live From Cairo
  R. William Attwood By R. William Attwood Published on November 14, 2017
  Wit 4
  Ian Bassingthwaighte’s debut novel, Live From Cairo, is set at the sharp end of the migrant crisis. Dalia has been forced to flee from Iraq to Cairo, and when she is refused permission to join her husband Omran in the United States, she is stranded in a country where she is not safe and cannot work.

  Charlie, her lawyer, is American, big-hearted, a little in love with Dalia and maybe at the end of his tether: he is prepared to break the rules to secure Dalia a second chance. His plan involves his colleague Aos, an Egyptian who is waging his own extra-legal struggle alongside the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square and can ill afford to be drawn into Charlie’s scheme. Together they recruit Hana, who has recently come to Egypt from the States to work with the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees—and to confront her own family’s history of dislocation.

  Meanwhile Omran, who knows only that Dalia’s application has failed, is preparing to give up his life in America in order to be with his wife.

  Https%3a%2f%2fs3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads.bookwitty.com%2f030f0bb3 7cb6 4a61 aa0b ab94285241a8 inline original.jpeg?ixlib=rails 2.1
  Get it here.
  Bassingthwaighte’s novel combines a global perspective with a profound respect for the Egyptian context in which it is set. It also belongs to that uniquely American tradition of protest writing which even while it rages against inhumane systems and despairs of bringing about change is shot through with an irrepressible faith in people. Steinbeck is the godfather of this tradition, his heirs range from Joseph Heller (Catch 22) to William T. Vollmann (Imperial), and Bassingthwaighte is a worthy inheritor.

  As well as being a novel about the cruelty of the resettlement system and all Westerners’ complicity in it, Live From Cairo is also a love story, about a couple whom a vast human crisis cannot separate, and a story about friendship vaulting high, wide cultural barriers. It’s a warm, often funny, and kindhearted tragedy.

  The origins of the book lie in Ian’s own time in Egypt, where he interned at a non-profit which aims to guide refugees through the legal process of resettlement. When I had the opportunity to talk to Ian, the first thing I wanted to know about was the arduous process of turning that experience into fiction:

  This is a book that engages with suffering which is happening now, on a vast scale, and the truth is that most of us who are lucky enough not to have to think about this suffering choose not to. What sustained you in your thinking and writing?

  The principal thoughts at the heart of my novel—that the resettlement system is fundamentally broken; that countries who create refugees should be bound by law to resettle them; that the freedom to move is no less important than the freedom to speak—came from and were sustained by the stories of the refugees I met, interviewed, and was inspired by. It ate me up to watch them suffer. As a result, I felt strongly that I should "do something."

  I also knew full well that there was nothing at all I could do. The resettlement system was and remains predicated on systems of government, which are predicated on systems of belief, which are predicated on what feels, now perhaps more than when I started, like an unchangeable prejudice. That some people just don't matter. Part of the reason the book took so long to write was that I had to constantly battle the feeling that it lacked meaning because of that. What book, regardless of how well written, plotted, edited, or publicized, could make a shit bit of difference in a world that systemically turns away from suffering?

  This perhaps reveals me as a bit of a nihilist. Though I've always felt this was a lazy way to be. Which brings me to the answer to your question: I was more or less sustained in the writing by the fear of giving up, giving in, lying down, letting it be, and just sort of living forever with the guilt of having failed to express and defend my opinion. That refugees do in fact matter.

  Time and again in Live From Cairo, you show how well-meaning and lovable people find themselves serving as the cogs of cruel, or at least callous, and destructive machinery. Were you anxious, at any point, that your intentions for this novel could go similarly awry?

  There was, and I think ought to have been, an intense self-consciousness in writing about a country that I wasn't from, a language I didn't speak, a religion I didn't practice, and a thousand traumas I'd only witnessed second-hand as the person tasked with transcribing them. So I worried, first and foremost, that my portrayal would do more harm than good; that my own prejudices, ones I didn't even know I had, would leak into the work; that my characters would be so stereotypical that they would just reaffirm biases I had intended to undermine. You're right to call it anxiousness. But that anxiety functioned as a tool. It reminded me to go back, to revise endlessly, to seek out advice, to read more, to learn more. I leave it up to the reader to decide whether that due diligence paid off.

  The novel really wrestles with those problems internally: how to convey something as simple as ‘refugees do matter’ without loss or betrayal or meeting with indifference. Aos, Hana and Charlie all work to turn the unique and subjective (and horrifying) stories of refugees into the formulaic accounts required by the resettlement procedure. It’s a process in which almost everything that matters seems to get lost.

  One of the book’s early pivotal moments comes when Charlie is first trying to make Hana care about Dalia. He gives up telling Hana about her and instead he hands over Dalia’s written account of her flight from Iraq. Only her own words can make her matter, and then only because she happens to be a talented storyteller. I wondered at what point in the writing of this novel you decided to include not only Dalia’s written statement, but also Dalia’s point of view, and why?

  You won't be surprised to know the first draft of this book was written entirely from Charlie's perspective. It struck me, soon after finishing the first version of that last page, that I'd made a huge mistake. This wasn't Charlie's story. Or not just Charlie's story. Why was he the only one who got to see, got to think, got to feel something explicit and not implied? Each subsequent draft took more of Charlie's pages and gave them to someone else.

  At the time, it felt like an elusive process but in retrospect it was pretty obvious. Hana, the Iraqi-American, got the first batch of pages. Followed by Aos, the Egyptian with an American friend. Dalia, and her husband, Omran, only came after I'd learned and trusted myself to write outside my direct experience in order to tell a necessary but heretofore missing part of my story: why refugees run; where they go; what sustains them. It wasn't enough to filter that experience through another character's gaze. Dalia and Omran demanded to speak for themselves. To tell their own stories. As the writer, I had to do the homework—the reading, the learning, the empathetic imagining—required to make that possible. It took only a few months to see that I needed Dalia's and Omran's perspectives, and especially Dalia's letter, but it took years for those elements to manifest in ways that felt real to me and not exploitative.

  For instance, that letter—the first-person written account of Dalia's flight from Baghdad—was one of the last things I technically "finished." Even in the reviewer's copy of the novel, it appears in a slightly altered form than in the finished book. Because her perspective is the furthest from my own, her character took the most work, the most thought, the most constant tinkering. In fact, I'm doing a few small edits now that the paperback is coming out. You can probably guess where I'm making changes.

  Central though Charlie still is to the book, it’s hard for me to imagine a version of Live From Cairo with just one point of view, because it seems like part of what it’s about is the sheer complexity of sharing the world with other people. Your story brings together four characters from very different backgrounds in this fantastically populous city, and then, for most of the book, they misunderstand each other, let each other down, endanger each other, even traumatise one another, and usually with the best intentions. So what drew you to Charlie in the first place? What made his story the right way into this complex situation?

  At first, Charlie was the only character I knew how to write. So I was drawn to him by necessity. But I discovered another reason I needed him as the book developed. He is the character who brings and binds the others together. It's a matter of positioning. While Charlie isn't the central character, he is the central point: equidistant from Hana, Dalia, Omran, Aos, and Tim [Charlie’s brother, a soldier in the U.S. Army] such that ostensibly disparate story elements—the UNHCR, the U.S. military, the Egyptian revolution, and the global refugee crisis—may be revealed as inextricably linked.

  The poems of Hafez and Rumi play active—and for me very moving—roles in the story of Live From Cairo, and there are also extended references to several Egyptian writers, many of whom I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of before. What book would you recommend to someone who has yet to discover Egyptian literature?

  I'd start with Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building, which is a classic. I'd also recommend Omar Robert Hamilton's The City Always Wins.

  And what are you working on now?

  Another novel. It's so early in the drafting process that it's not worth describing in too much detail, but what I can say is this: on first glance, it's very different than Live from Cairo. Imagine a mashup of The Road (Cormac McCarthy), A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean), and the movie Interstellar. In other words, a literary post-apocalyptic sci-fi western that asks one fundamental question: in the event of a global catastrophe, who among us gets to live?

• Ian Bassingthwaighte Website - http://www.igbass.com/

  Ian Bassingthwaighte received his MFA in fiction from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, where he won Hopwood Novel and Hopwood Short Fiction Awards. In 2009, he was a Fulbright grantee to Egypt. His fiction, non-fiction, and photography have appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, The Southern Review, Tin House, TriQuarterly, and more. His work was also included on the "Distinguished Stories" list in the Best American Short Stories 2015 and the "Notable Nonrequired Reading" list in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015.

  His debut novel, Live from Cairo, will be published by Scribner in 2017.

Bassingthwaighte, Ian: LIVE FROM CAIRO
Kirkus Reviews. (May 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bassingthwaighte, Ian LIVE FROM CAIRO Scribner (Adult Fiction) $26.00 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-5011-4687-9

This brilliantly conceived and artfully detailed novel set in the Egyptian immigration bureaucracy is both a comedy and tragedy of errors."Welcome to Egypt!...Everything was invented here. Poetry, science, math. The calendar, the plow." With this greeting, Cairo taxi driver Mustafa ushers Hana, an Iraqi-American who has arrived for a job with the U.N. refugee office, into his cab for the first of many wild rides. (After she accidentally damages his car, they are bonded for life.) One of Hana's first cases is that of an Iraqi named Dalia, the wife of a man who helped rebuild water mains for the Americans in Baghdad until violent retaliation engulfed them both. Only he was given asylum in the U.S.; she's now trying to join him but is too reserved to confess the details which qualify her for relocation. "A single-file queue almost a million people long appeared in Hana's mind. Dalia was an invisible dot in the distance, with no chance whatsoever of leaving Egypt." What Hana doesn't yet know is that Dalia's immigration lawyer, an American named Charlie, is in love with his client and is about to cook up a crazy plan to help her outwit the system. The unfolding scheme also drags in Aos, Charlie's translator and only friend, a young man who joins the nightly protests against the government in Tahrir Square. There are far too many great things about this book to list in this small space: the tension and energy of the plot; the tragic back stories of Charlie and Hana; the vignettes of Dalia's husband in Boston; the richness and subtlety of detail in the writing. In one scene, Charlie and Aos are sitting in a Lebanese cafe. Aos is bursting to explain to Charlie everything that's wrong with his plan but can't bring himself to speak. Meanwhile, a patron who is smoking demands coals for his shisha, already piled high. "Aos's heart sank to witness reason's failing: the headwaiter stacking hot coals on top of hot coals. Only his delicate and ingenious positioning saved the tower from collapse." The ironies of bureaucracy and wartime, a la Catch-22, meet the ironies of love and sacrifice, a la The Necklace, profoundly humanizing the global refugee crisis. Bassingthwaighte's virtuoso debut deserves the widest attention.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bassingthwaighte, Ian: LIVE FROM CAIRO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=28856789. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002896

Live from Cairo
Deborah Donovan
BookPage. (July 2017): p21.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
By Ian Bassingthwaighte

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Scribner $26, 336 pages

ISBN 9781501146879 eBook available

DEBUT FICTION

Ian Bassingthwaighte's experience as a legal aid worker in Egypt in 2009, helping to place refugees from Iraq and Sudan, was the impetus for this remarkable and timely debut novel, which takes place in Cairo in 2011, just after President Hosni Mubarak's removal from power.

The story focuses on four characters trying to survive in the chaotic months following Mubarak's ouster. Dalia is an Iraqi refugee who becomes trapped in Egypt after her petition to join her husband, Omran, in America is denied. Omran worked for the U.S. Army in Iraq and was abducted and tortured by anti-American militia. He was granted the right to go to America for his own safety, but for want of an official marriage certificate, Dalia was forced to stay behind. She escaped to Cairo, where she contacts the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in hopes of obtaining her own refugee status so she can join Omran.

Dalia's case is assigned to Hana, an Iraqi citizen with her own tragic backstory: She has recently been hired by the UNHCR to read and evaluate refugee petitions, only a fraction of which are approved each year. Hana empathizes with Dalia, but her boss insists that Dalia's case is not convincing enough, and her petition is denied.

Two other characters who become immersed in Dalia's plight are Charlie, a lawyer for the Refugee Relief Project, and Aos, his translator who is also an active participant in anti-government protests. How they become enmeshed in a risky plot to get Dalia out of Cairo becomes the crux of the novel's second half, as they enlist Hana's help in some highly illegal activity, putting them all in danger.

We can all become numb by reading the news each day and seeing images on social media of those seeking safety from the violence in their home countries. But a novel such as this puts a very personal face on this growing global problem--one that is not going to disappear soon.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Donovan, Deborah. "Live from Cairo." BookPage, July 2017, p. 21. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497099074/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=96d2d7d7. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A497099074

Live from Cairo
Emily Dziuban
Booklist. 113.19-20 (June 2017): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Live from Cairo. By Ian Bassingthwaighte. July 2017. 336p. Scribner, $26 (9781501146879); e-book (9781501146893).

Bassingthwaighte's debut features Dalia and her husband, Omran, who was granted asylum in the U.S. for helping the Americans during the Iraq War. Their traditional, tribal marriage offers no proof authorities will accept, so Dalia is trapped in Egypt, without resources and separated from the man she loves. With coaching from lawyer Charlie, who's secretly in love with her, Dalia works to convince Iraqi American resettlement officer Hana that her story is more urgent, desperate, horrifying, and exigent than those of thousands of others. She doesn't. Yet Charlie and Hana have their own complicated motives to help Dalia leave Cairo, itself rising as a character in the novel, roiling in the aftermath of 201 Is political revolution. The government, concerned with planting grass, causes despair, and the streets are game boards for Frogger. This novel shows readers a painful, absurdist refugee experience through a kaleidoscopic lens. Best of all, Bassignthwaighte, a Fulbright grantee to Egypt, allows his characters to be human. The emotional intelligence on display and the author's use of language set this novel apart.--Emily Dziuban

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dziuban, Emily. "Live from Cairo." Booklist, June 2017, p. 53. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582694/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c717641b. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582694

Live from Cairo
Publishers Weekly. 264.22 (May 29, 2017): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Live from Cairo

Ian Bassingthwaighte. Scribner, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5011-4687-9

Bassingthwaighte's expansive first novel plunges straight into the heart of Cairo in the throes of the Arab Spring of 2011. Told from multiple perspectives, this searing tale follows several well-meaning, but perhaps unequipped, young people as they try to forge a path to freedom for Dalia, an Iraqi refugee separated from her husband, who is waiting for her in Boston. Hana, an Iraqi-American resettlement officer, first denies Dalia's application to leave Egypt, citing strict rules, in spite of her awareness of Dalia's harrowing experiences of rape and torture. Charlie, Dalia's American attorney, who is passionate about Dalia's case and overwhelmed by the existential futility of his job, convinces his earnest Egyptian translator, Aos, and eventually the skeptical Hana that they should go to whatever lengths necessary to see to it that this deserving refugee finds relief and happiness. But Cairo is a volatile, dangerous place, the streets full of protestors and vicious policemen, and Charlie's plan spirals out of control. The author paints a deep and empathetic picture of the inner struggles of his courageous, flawed characters, who in the midst of mortal danger and insurmountable odds, grapple with the most fundamental questions of right and wrong. The answers follow neither rules nor laws, making the climax to this novel breathtaking and heartrending. (July)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Live from Cairo." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500682/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1777acf3. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A494500682

"Bassingthwaighte, Ian: LIVE FROM CAIRO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=28856789. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018. Donovan, Deborah. "Live from Cairo." BookPage, July 2017, p. 21. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497099074/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=96d2d7d7. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018. Dziuban, Emily. "Live from Cairo." Booklist, June 2017, p. 53. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582694/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c717641b. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018. "Live from Cairo." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500682/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1777acf3. Accessed 14 Mar. 2018.

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