As a budding author, each week I have to withstand the ordeal of an interview. In over a hundred of them, the same question crops up time and time again. It may come at the beginning of an interview or insert itself at the end. It is as certain to come as death and taxes—an enquiry I dread. It means they haven’t understood my writing, let alone browsed the free copy sent to the producer.
“In all your travels, what’s your favourite place to visit?”
Ugh! I take a deep breath and stare up at Heaven, pleading for patience. I end up giving a long-winded answer. It releases a suppressed yawn from the interviewer, bidding me every success as a writer. It’s never the place. It’s the people.
“You see,” I tell him/her/she/he—or whatever category of the day mine host wishes to be addressed as—“it isn’t that simple. The places I visit act as a clothesline to hang stories upon, of eccentrics who catch my eye.”
If I think of Cyprus—a place I’d fly to in a snap—it isn’t of sunshine, the Mediterranean, and long naps beside the pool. It’s about waiting for the local buses. Two competing buses are supposed to run every alternate thirty minutes during the tourist season. Both arrive at the same time, or don’t bother turning up during siesta time in the afternoon. I, the tourist, would be stranded—failing to notice the absence of locals waiting at the bus stop- a giveaway on a busy route. Thank goodness for George, the taxi owner across the road, dozing in the heat beneath a fan in his ramshackle clapboard office. I pay him a pittance for transporting me. Half the time, he won’t even charge.
On Thursday mornings, however, the buses always arrive on time. There’s a line-up of old women carrying large, handwoven bags, waiting to get on. The driver turns to face them.
Like an insider joke, he asks them, “Are you heading to the Carrefour?”
They nod in their usual way.
“I’ll drop you there. Pick you up in an hour?”
Again, they nod, not interrupting their chattering. The driver then asks me,
“Sir, would you mind if I took a detour to drop them at their market?”
It all reminds me of my long-lost childhood—of summers spent in Africa within my close-knit community. Alas, now all dispersed. Only this bus stop and its passengers to remind me of those bygone days when all you did was wave or whistle and someone known would stop and offer you a ride. And the local minibuses always detoured for its customers.
Now how can I explain all this in convenient thirty-second sound bites that my team rely on to promote my books—and keep my interviewer from falling asleep?
Characters hijack me, leading me far astray from the course plotted.
I imagine making a speech at an awards ceremony:
“My books were supposed to be written for my boys. To show them where I came from. Unfortunately, at this moment, my work is dedicated to a lowly old yam seller sitting on the shores of Africa. She’s selling a meagre ration of grilled offerings, peppered in chillies and sprayed with fresh lime juice. She barely makes enough to keep body and soul together, let alone feed her six grandchildren, whose parents died of AIDS.”
How can I ever explain the beauty of this—my most memorable sight—to an interviewer a million miles away in thinking? Who expects the standard regurgitatible fodder to feed to his/her/he/she’s audience?
All I can be is grateful for what I’ve seen.
