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Zoë Ferraris answers questions about her first novel, Finding Nouf, the first
in an amateur detective series set in Saudi Arabia
First of all, I think people would like to know your connection to Saudi Arabia,
so they don't think you're making this all up.
Well, actually, I made it up. But there's also a lot of real Saudi Arabia in
the book.
When I was nineteen, I got married to a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin. We met in San
Francisco, and I fell completely in love with him. He was hilarious and
brilliant and over-the-top zany. He had come to America to study English. He
told his parents that once he was fluent, he would go back to Jeddah. So he
never became fluent. Learning English – actually, he called it "Languish" – was
just going to have to take forever.
We got married and had a daughter. The day she was born, he decided that we had
to visit his family in Jeddah. Just a short visit, you know, to show off his new
wife and kid. We wound up staying for almost a year. It turns out that you can't
just visit for a week or two. You have to stay until his mother stops having
heart episodes every time you go to the airport.
So you didn't get along with your mother-in-law?
Not after she convinced me that a liberal application of henna could
eliminate zits on your face forever. Thank god for the burqa.
They were a Bedouin family. Did you live in the desert?
No, they had given up the nomadic life and settled in Jeddah, in a
neighborhood called Kilo Seven. Bin Laden's father built the neighborhood in the
70s as a retreat for his banished wife. It grew into a crowded, multicultural
place with a lot of Sudanese and East Asian immigrants, but it retains a deeply
conservative quality even today.
Women weren't allowed to leave the house alone. If you did, you'd get chased
around by the religious police, maybe smacked with a camel whip. One guy went
after me with his shoe. When I caught the shoe and ran in the house, he stood at
the window and asked for it back.
How did Finding Nouf evolve out of this?
The biggest revelation I had in Saudi Arabia was learning that men were
just as frustrated by gender segregation as women were. My ex-husband's best
friend tried for years to find a wife. It surprised me to realize something that
should have been obvious: if you're not allowed to speak to the opposite sex,
how do you meet a mate?
So you and your husband are now divorced?
Yes. After we came back from Saudi, we spent another year together and
then he moved back to Jeddah.
Did he manage to meet another mate?
His mother found him the perfect cousin.
Your main character, Nayir, is a devout Muslim man. What was the
inspiration for his character? Was your ex-husband devout?
Not at first. He hated devoutness. But we knew plenty of men who were.
At first I wanted Nayir to actually be a religious policeman, but then
I realized that chasing women down the street is never going to be a modest
occupation. Modesty is so important in Islam, and I wanted Nayir to be the real
thing.
He is actually a compilation of three other men I knew in Saudi, all of whom
were looking for a wife – and none of whom were successful, mostly because they
were good guys who didn't want to break the rules by talking to strange women.
What would have happened if they'd spoken to a strange woman?
They might have been harassed by the religious police. Or by their mothers. And
then later by their mothers-in-law. Or they might have realized, after talking
to the woman, that she wasn't virtuous, because what sort of woman goes around
talking to strange men?
Why did you decide to write about murder?
The first time it occurred to me was at a jacket bazaar in Jeddah,
where my ex-husband bought a "Columbo" coat and proposed setting off to solve
mysteries. I liked the idea of a Muslim detective who loves Columbo. But
the story's main mystery evolved as I began to realize that, because Nayir is so
proper, something very drastic would have to happen – such as murder – in order
for him to justify prying into a woman's life.
How did you get to see the parts of the city you describe in your novel?
If I gave him enough grief, my ex-husband would take me out, but we
always had to take the whole family. There were about 45 of us, including
children. We had a lot of picnics, which is the outing of choice in Jeddah. We
had picnics at the zoo, the marina, and any old sidewalk we could find. We used
to picnic at the airport because it was the only place in town with privacy AND
trees. If the airport workers caught us, they'd turn on the sprinklers and we'd
all run off dripping wet.
It's interesting that you chose to write a novel instead of a memoir.
Well, I figure a novel is the best of both worlds. I get to write about
Saudi, but I also get to have my characters do things I want them to do, as
opposed to everyone just doing what they want to do. Like most writers,
I put in an application to be God and then framed the rejection slip.
So back to your mother-in-law. How do you feel about her now?
In an introduction to his novel, The Fortunate
Pilgrim, Mario Puzo writes an homage to his mother in which he tells her
that she was the inspiration for his greatest achievement – the creation of Don
Corleone. When I think of my mother-in-law today, I imagine that someday my pen
will do her that same kind of justice.
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