I grew up in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey (Turkiye).
I was fourteen when the whispers of war first became audible to my young ears. It became louder in statements like: Search under your car for signs of tampering before you leave the house in the morning. Vary your routes and routine; don't go the same way all the time, and leave at different times each day. Carry your I.D. card with you at all times; you won't be allowed on base without it. A labyrinth of concrete barricades a quarter mile long marked the entrance to the small air base where my family and I spent our days. Heavily armed MPs (Military Police) looked carefully under our car with mirrors before we entered the base. In fact, machine guns became commonplace; the armed Turkish guards who rode my school bus (one in the back, one in the front) sat solemnly with automatic weapons laid across their laps (and people are shocked when I tell them there were metal detectors at the school where I taught in Yazoo City). My father's assigned driver now arrived each morning with an armed guard in the front seat who met my father at the door of our apartment building, machine gun in his arms. The message reached exclamation point status when a beloved member of our small military community was killed in a car bombing. Shortly after, the father of an Egyptian classmate was killed in another. Terrorism became a buzz word in a community which had never given the idea much thought. We knew we were on the brink of war, but it's hard to understand the concept when you've never experienced anything like it before. And then an early morning phone call brought everything to a halt; it was mid-January 1991. Our fathers went to work in the middle of the night, called in by their supervisors, and a heavy snowfall began the long two-week break that suddenly interrupted our school year. Eventually, our lives continued, but everything was erratic. School would start at 7:30 one morning, and 10:00 the next. Bus routes were varied, and sporting events between the other military base schools were stopped altogether. There were still tests, crushes, friendship tiffs and school dances, but the Spring of 1991 was a very different kind of year.
We didn't live in fear; the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border was hundreds of miles from Ankara, but our lives were disrupted in all kinds of ways. Looking back, I'm still surprised at how we adapted to the changes and managed to have a pretty normal year in spite of what seems so completely abnormal. Now that I'm older, I think more about the issues that caused Desert Storm, and I wonder if the Middle East will every truly experience peace. When President Assad of Syria first came on my radar about four years ago, I was working on a novel that depicted the odd yet life-changing friendship between a young football star and the silly old lady who works as a cashier in the local supermarket. I was teaching, dabbling in fiction on my off-hours, and then something in the news caught my attention--a familiar story that struck a chord--that took me back to the winter of '91, when a madman named Saddam Hussein interrupted my teenage world. I remember hearing whispers of mass graves, chemical weapons and the merciless deeds of a power hungry bully. When I first heard about Assad and the atrocities of his current regime, it all came back, and I couldn't help but wonder, does his family know? Will his daughter grow up despising her father for the deeds the internet and world media will shove in her face? Will monsters like this continue to justify their heavy-handed rule? And I began writing a new story.
Desert Rose
The chaos in the Middle East continues to mystify me; and after yet another decade of U.S./U.N. intervention, it seems the leaders we helped establish will return to what they had before. But there is an element of positive energy in the so-called Arab Spring, causing me to wrestle some with the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. I also wanted to explore the roots of Christianity that lay buried in the desert sands, like a dry river bed whose waters have gone underground. There is a rich tradition of Christian faith in these countries; what does that look like in places like Damascus of Syria? What does the church look like now? How has it developed, so far from its Western sister churches? I imagine the differences are complex, yet there is one God, one Savior, one Christ. And there are other sub-cultures like the Bedouin, who are so like the Bible characters of the Old Testament that we love to read about--Moses, Abraham, Isaac. They're still there, living much the way they did over two millennia ago.
I took some liberties with the geographical areas that most captured me as a child. I wanted to borrow the setting of Petra--which has long intrigued everyone who's discovered this hidden desert gem--the coral sandstone city that time forgot. Sadly, it's just a tourist trap now, but for centuries it was a haven to those who needed to get away, a hideout, even a home to the persecuted church for a season. Early Christians worshiped in the rooms carved out of the red earth mountains, leaving artwork for us to wonder at, imagining their early adoration of the Christ that forced them to hide away, to worship in secret. Which brought up another tangent. Why do Christians hide away? Besides the obvious reason of persecution, there are Christian sub-cultures that have popped up from time to time who simply chose not to live or look like those around them. I've tried to understand the vision of the Shakers--who loved to create with an emphasis on quality and simple living. Yet they rejected common practices like marriage and child-bearing. It's baffling, yet these kinds of groups continue to pop up, often failing under the test of time. Yet Christianity was once just a small shoot off of the branch of Judaism. It's hard to hide a light under a bushel, no?
And ultimately, the presentation of the Gospel. Could I do it in a new way, with an original flair? Could someone who did not grow up in a Christian home or country understand the message clearly? Could I strip away the blinders of Christian culture and lay a foundation that would lead a reader, regardless of their background, to the cross?
I don't know. I know Christians will read Desert Rose and recognize their faith experience in some of what I've written; I imagine they will appreciate the spiritual struggle that confronts Dahlia as she views the uncomfortable reality of her life. But regardless of all that, I hope that I have created something that increases awareness of the struggle facing countries in the Middle East, that causes us to question our own prejudices and power struggles, that challenges us to let the Savior free us from our own demons and lead us to the living waters so that we--in the unique ways granted to us--will carry the "healing leaves" to those around us and thus to the nations. As it was prophesied.
Take my life
and let if be
all for you.
