National November Writing Month Competition

(This post is really for a limited audience. Regular political commentary could resume some day since I've closed my other political-letters-to-a-Persian-Gulf-leader blog after giving it more attention than this one.)

I've begun considering themes for NaNoWriMo again this year, having stopped last year's novel-writing race when my 90 year-old Mother had the first of several health issues. (She's much better now.) My daughter told me a couple days ago that she plans to join the November novel-writing month challenge again this year, but I didn't mention my own plan and she didn't ask.

The last two of my NaNoWriMo November novels were not fiction at all, but I chose to call them fiction for purposes of the competition. My family moved from the Seattle area to Bahrain in the summer of 1965. It was my senior year of high school, spent falling in love, a star-crossed romance with a side of politics, intrigue and well-known players. That was book one. 

The second covered the next 17 years and included wars in between rendevous with my lover up to the minute I saw him last. That was the minute when I found out the extent of personal danger into which he'd allowed me to be unwittingly placed.

The next book may explore those dangers and maybe a bit about the 1981 fictional terrorist operation so quaintly called a coup attempt. There has been a recent surprising development in my life which begs my attention to historical details of events and relationships on the island and in other countries, so NaNoWriMo is a disciplined approach and the time is right. 

November is just a few weeks away, so I've got decisions to make if I want to have the trilogy finished this year!



#NaNoWriMo #NaNoWriMo2019 #Bahrain #Seattle #Politics #StarCrossedLovers

Behind The Veil

for a little while.

Had to think about an interaction with three young people from Saudi Arabia with whom I chatted for about 20 minutes on a Seattle E-line bus at the beginning of the month. Two were women, one of whom is a student in her early 20s, chatty, the other older, didn't talk much, and the student's backwards-baseball-hat wearing brother, 28-30, with the trending Mo Salman beard. Dress was in northwest style. It was freezing cold.

They were sitting across from me on the side-facing seats, chatting. My linguistic radar kicked in. I thought that I heard Arabic, but it was rather noisy. Undaunted, in a quiet moment, I asked the chap to please speak a bit more so that I could tell what language they were speaking as I wasn't sure if it was one that I recognized, but it sounded like Arabic. One of the girls laughed and said that I was right, and the chap asked how I knew.

Naturally I took the occasion to first ask him, in Arabic of course, where he is from. Saudi Arabia. Young banker from Jeddah just here for a vacation, visiting sister who is a student at a local college. I trotted out my favorite sentences in Arabic -- which sound very impressive, even to me -- and they all three told me that I speak beautiful Arabic. (Nevermind that it was three sentences and a joke.)

I gave them my website card, of course, asked the girlies to bookmark it, noted that I'd put my email there, told them to contact me if I could help them in any reasonable way.

I didn't mention my primary contacts in Bahrain, only that I'd lived there and gone on to study subjects related to that life-changing experience and followed closely events in the area. I did mention the some members of the Algosaibi family had been family friends and graciously hosted my sister and myself in Beirut before the civil war there. I did that because of the Algosaibi bank that was in the news a few years ago and the young chap is a banker; couldn't help myself showing off that I knew something about a big scandal in Saudi Arabia. Shortly thereafter, the bus ride was over. We went our separate ways.

It has struck me as very strange over these weeks that a banker, a Saudi banker, would ride a city bus. Lyft. Uber. Some other company. Cost of bus for three people more expensive than Lyft. Saudi Banker can't afford to hire a cheap car? They all had smart phones, smart clothing and good English. Perhaps they wanted the thrill of riding the bus which always smells like pot and booze because it's the one goes straight up and down the main highway. You know, a real slice of Seattle life without all those messy receipts. 

That's why I do it. Staying behind the veil.