Off the Beaten Track: A Paper Grave and a Red Sea

Our guest today is mystery author Zoë Ferraris. Zoë moved to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the first Gulf War to live with her then husband and his extended family of Saudi-Palestinian Bedouins. She has an MFA from Columbia University. Her debut novel, Finding Nouf, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and has been published in twenty languages. The sequel, City of Veils, was released in August 2010. She currently lives in San Francisco.

I had never heard of a ‘paper grave’ until I started doing research for City of Veils. In 1972, archaeologists in Yemen unearthed "an unappealing mash of old parchments and paper documents" – a thousand codices of what many now consider to be one of the earliest copies of the Koran.

Some Muslims believe that old copies of the Koran cannot simply be thrown away but must be disposed of properly – either buried or cremated. Or, in this case, walled inside a loft in the Great Mosque of Sana’a. (I found this idea very touching and subsequently decided that I would like to be buried with my favorite books.)

Anyway, what seemed remarkable about the find was that many of the texts varied slightly from the Koran as it is today. In the Christian part of the planet this doesn’t seem odd. How often has the Bible gone through permutations? People edit! But orthodox Muslims claim that the Koran today is the word of God exactly as it was when it was first written down. Exactly. In thirteen centuries not a single diacritic mark has been changed. The Koran is the perfect embodiment of God’s word, and humans shouldn’t go messing with it.

So the discovery of earlier “versions” of the Koran was a little upsetting.

In City of Veils, a radical filmmaker named Leila Nawar goes in pursuit of this explosive story and winds up dead. She’s kind of like Molly Norris - someone who sticks a cattle prod into a tangle of hyper-sensitive religious issues and gets a shock.

Leila’s body is found in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, not far from the Tomb of Eve (yep, the Eve who was married to Adam). According to Muslim tradition, Eve is buried in Jeddah, and she was over 100 meters tall. (It’s a very long gravesite.) In Arabic, the name “Jeddah” means “grandmother” and is a supposed reference to Eve, the grandmother of all. I even met a militant feminist once who insisted that the Red Sea got its name because although Eve was dead, her menstrual flow was not. And when the Red Sea turned red (which it occasionally does) it was a sign that Eve was still procreating the human race.

Investigating a murder is a little bit like archaeology – but at least with murder, there’s usually someone still alive who can tell you the truth. As the investigators in City of Veils discover more about Leila, they find other reasons that someone may have wanted to kill her…

You can find Zoë online at http://zoeferraris.com/ and Pilgrimage.

Off The Beaten Track: Headdress Diplomacy

Canadian crime writer Anthony Bidulka counts academia, accounting, footwear, food services, and farming among his former careers. A decade ago, he left all that behind to write novels full time. His award-winning Russell Quant mystery series features a gay, world-traveling detective who lives a big life in a small city on the Canadian prairies and whose adventures take him, and the author, to settings as varied as Barcelona, Botswana, the Arctic, Hawaii, and, most recently, across the Middle East. Date with a Sheesha is his seventh book in the series.

Writing a mystery series where in every book the main character travels to some foreign destination, begs the question. Which comes first? The travel? Or the story? The answer, for me, is not as straightforward as it might seem. I can say this. I never select a travel destination solely for the research possibilities. Yet, when I arrive in certain places a neon sign seems to light up in my head blaring the message: this is a location you'll want to write about. Although I always do some amount of journalling while travelling, in these instances, I pay closer attention to details, to smells and sounds and food and drink and weather – all the things I use in my writing to evoke a foreign setting.

All this being said, the story is still tantamount. A foreign locale needs to fit the story I want to tell. Not the opposite. I often tell the story about when I was on my honeymoon, which took me sailing around the Arabian peninsula. At the time, I was in the midst of writing what would become the sixth book in my series. It would have made sense – given the proximity of source material and inspiration – that I would have set the book in the Middle East. The book's title? Aloha, Candy Hearts. As you might guess, I did not use my adventures in Dubai, Fujairah, and Jeddah in this book. Why? They simply did not fit the story I wanted to tell. Of all the books in the series, this was meant to be the most romantic and whimsical of the bunch. Hawaii fit the bill. Riding camels in a dust storm and dealing with the religious police in Saudi Arabia did not. Even so, the neon sign in my head lit up like Christmastime. I did write about my Arabian adventures in the next book, Date With a Sheesha.

I was blissfully unaware (at first) of the import of our big, white, birthday cake of a cruise ship docking in Jeddah (the first American based vessel in five years). But as the women donned their abbeyas prior to disembarkation, turning the ship's jovial ballroom half black, it started to sink in.

At some point during our time ashore, my spouse and I deviated from the group to do some investigating on our own. We shopped for shoes and spices in the old souk. The vendors seemed less than friendly. But we ventured on, undaunted. At one stall a rather aggressive seller managed to fit me with a Middle Eastern headdress (complete with skull cap) before I could manage to say a polite 'no' and move away. He was that good. And fast. This was my first moment of true discomfort. What to do? I was certain if I walked the rough runway I'd just come through wearing this sideshow version of the populace's daily dress, I would be scorned, spit on by camels, and run outta town. I decided to buy it (to be polite), and wear it only as far as the other side of the nearest corner. But I had no idea what I was about to be in for.

The headdress was ridiculously inexpensive – something like Cdn$3. I paid and walked off, almost immediately sensing a change in my environment. Vendors who'd previously ignored me when I'd tried to buy something without speaking the language, suddenly smiled as I sauntered by, the thick white shafts of fabric floating behind me like a cape. Others waved. Some began to follow me and tell me (they suddenly knew some English) that I looked like the King of Jordan. By the time I returned to the tour bus area, I had a Justin Bieber-ish entourage. And then the media descended. I spent half an hour giving interviews for radio and print and having my picture taken with the head of Saudi Arabian tourism (who just happened to be our tour guide that day...guess who alerted the media?). I could almost believe that if you were to visit Jeddah today, you might see my face on the latest travel brochure for 'Visit Saudi Arabia'.

As writers, we wear many hats. Creator. Editor. Financial manager. Promoter. Salesperson. Spokesperson. Researcher. This headdress was never a hat I'd expected to don. But it brought me a wonderful experience and taught me a valuable life lesson. I learned that the best way to show respect for a person's culture or way of life is to walk a mile in their...hat.