From Setbacks to Success: Finding My Story Again

The conception of my new novel “The Allspice Bath” was easy. When the idea met paper, the words flowed and the story grew, kicking at times and, at other points, remaining calm as slow waves. Like the protagonist Adele Azar I, too, grew up having one foot in my Canadian culture and another in my Lebanese heritage. It was sometimes a balancing act. Fortunately, I never split pants so that’s a good thing! I could empathize with my brave female character trying to find her place in the two worlds she inhabited. Like Adele’s father, my dad, too, was a shopkeeper and everyone knew him in the neighbourhood.

They also knew him as the man who had four daughters and no sons. You poor man! I heard people say constantly when I was growing up as if having only daughters was such an unfortunate thing. The seed for my novel was planted long ago and when I was ready to carry this story, the first sentence came easily: “You should’ve been born a boy”.

I started writing this novel about twenty years ago. Conceiving the idea for “The Allspice Bath” was easy, but writing the story and carrying it with me was more complicated. Firstly, I had a full-time job. I was juggling writing, a day job, family and other commitments and it was challenging but as the old saying goes if you want something bad enough you’ll find a way to achieve it. So I woke up before dawn and carved out time in those early hours. I have always been a morning person so it wasn’t difficult for me to spring out of bed. Well, it was a bit harder when it was -35 degrees and dark and cold in Canada’s capital, but then I bundled up and wrote. Wrote and wrote.

After a few weeks of this morning routine, I ended up hurting my back while shovelling (ah, Canadian winters!) and found that writing at my desk was becoming increasingly painful. I tried to sit up and write but I had to conserve my back for my day job which required a lot of sitting. Doctors advised me to rest and not overdo it, but this story was determined to grow – it kicked and nudged me in the ribs so to speak. I couldn’t just stop writing at this point, not when the story was developing.

And then I remembered reading something about how the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sometimes painted in bed due to excruciating pain from a terrible accident. Propping my head up on pillows and resting my notebook on my raised knees, I completed the first draft of “The Allspice Bath” by longhand in bed. When I felt better, I typed up the pages on my computer. Things were coming together. I was typing and rewriting at the same time.

I felt good. But then my father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Sadness overwhelmed me when I sat in the physician’s office and listened to him explain to my father and I that the tumour they had found was cancerous. While I took care of my ailing father, I turned to my writing in the moments my dad slept. I found solace in the pages of my novel and sorrow too.

After Babba died, working on this novel helped me through my grief. There were tears, pain and doubt, but it was as if my father’s spirit was telling me to keep going. To not give up. But I did give up. I set the story aside. My father’s death changed me. After his passing, I lived in a blur. Grief had travelled with me like an unwanted companion.

With time, I eventually distanced myself from this sorrow and started to appreciate life once more and to write again, but I didn’t return to “The Allspice Bath”. I worked on a novel set in Thailand, a culture so different from my own and after completing the first few chapters, I decided to enroll at the Humber School for Writers correspondence program submitting the pages of this new work-in-progress. I was paired with a mentor who told me that I had another story to tell and I mentioned “The Allspice Bath” to her and with her encouragement, I returned to that novel.

During our correspondence, the universe tested me again. My computer died and with this breakdown my entire novel was lost. I hadn’t saved a copy elsewhere. Luckily, I still had my longhand notes. All these setbacks seemed like signs to just stop writing this book, to move on but I kept going and when the book was completed, I began the process of submitting to publishers and agents. Everyone kept saying ‘no’ and eventually all these ‘nos’ convinced me to shove this book in a desk drawer, to pretend that it didn’t exist, that I hadn’t spent years working on it.

But things have a funny way of working themselves out. In 2017, my second poetry collection “A Samurai’s Pink House” was published by Inanna Publications and at the launch party in Toronto I met the amazing Editor-in-Chief Luciana Ricciutelli. She asked me if I had another manuscript and I mentioned “The Allspice Bath”. Circumstances didn’t destroy my dream. Despite the setbacks and heartache, I found my story again and people who believed in it as much as I did.

 

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Sonia Saikaley was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada to a large Lebanese family. The daughter of a shopkeeper, she had access to all the treats she wanted. Her first book, “The Lebanese Dishwasher”, co-won the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. Her first collection of poetry, “Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter”, was published in 2012 and a second collection, “A Samurai’s Pink House”, was published in 2017 by Inanna Publications. She is currently working on a novel called “Jasmine Season on Hamra Street”. A graduate of the Humber School for Writers, she lives in her hometown of Ottawa. In the past, she worked as an English teacher in Japan. Her novel “The Allspice Bath” was recently published by Inanna Publications.

Twitter: @SaikaleySonia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sonia-Saikaley-1030439696980837/

Website: www.soniasaikaley.com

THE ALLSPICE BATH

Fiction. Middle Eastern Studies. Women’s Studies. It is 1970. The evergreens are thick with snow despite it being the month of April. In an Ottawa hospital, another daughter is born to the Azar family. The parents are from Kfarmichki, a village in Lebanon but their daughters were born in Canada. Four daughters, to be precise. No sons. Youssef is the domineering father. Samira is the quiescent mother. Rima, Katrina and Mona are the traditional daughters.

Then there is Adele, the newest member. “You should’ve been born a boy,” Samira whispers to Adele shortly after her entrance into the world. As she grows, Adele learns there are certain rules Lebanese girls must follow in order to be good daughters. First off, they must learn to cook, master housework, learn Arabic and follow the traditions of their culture. Above all, they must save themselves for marriage. But Adele dreams of being an artist. When she is accepted to the University of Toronto, this is her chance to have a life outside the confines of her strict upbringing. But can she defy her father?

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing