Naeem Murr

You know, I think it's very important, you know, one of the things when you're writing a book for me, there is a sort of, I don't want to say a magical element, but there's an element where the character, you suddenly find them facing you across the page.

And it was very important for me with almost every character that they retain some level of mystery and that they have

a real level of complexity there are plenty of writers you know someone like flo bear who don't really like people right they don't really like people and their stuff tends to be you know satirical and that we watch their characters from a distance and and can be sort of ourselves slightly superior to them and i've never felt that right my characters for me i want them to retain some level of mystery to be able to surprise me but i also think that it's important for jack

to, and which is one thing he's always aware of, which is the capacity for evil in himself, right?

I mean, I think that's one of the balancing aspects of the book also is that he's very aware of the capacity of evil in himself and he's constantly concerned about whether he is a good person, right?

But he has these forces on him throughout the course of the book.

So, you know, there are these relationships, you know, friendships that he has

with, you know, there's one woman who in some sense is incredibly innocent and offers him a future that is completely free of his past, right?

I mean, that's why in some sense he is so connected to Birdie.

She is incredibly sort of innocent.

She knows nothing, doesn't even know what a Palestinian is.

And then we have somebody else that he has a relationship with who really, she draws him back

to a taboo relationship he had when he was in Gaza.

So she draws him back to something very troubled but very passionate in the past.

So one is a future without the past.

One is drawing him back to the past.

And then we have his wife, who is, you know, is sort of obsessed with the Palestinian-Israeli situation.

but she's pregnant and that pregnancy offers the opportunity to have an american child a child with an american passport and an opportunity for them to finally kind of assimilate as if the child will bring them finally into an american world and will take both him and he's particularly concerned about dimra sort of finally get them to be americans and in this world rather than sort of

trapped in the past.

So I think, you know, his complexity is so built into, you know, his predicament, who he is and how he's struggling.