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LEZIMA GOMES
HE Georgetown University in Qatar recently hosted talented author Lilas Taha of the award-winning book Bitter Almonds published by Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press. Bitter Almonds is her second novel. Her first book was Shadows of Damascus, published by US-based SM Publishers in 2014. Taha is an engineer by profession and an author by heart. She holds a Master’s degree in industrial engineering, specialising in human factors. She was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother and immigrated to the US as a result of the Gulf War in 1990. “I come from a family of educators, as my mother was an English language teacher for middle school in Kuwait and my father a professor in philosophy of education at Kuwait University,” she said. She is the first person in her family to write and publish a book. Bitter Almonds won her the 2017 International Book Award. It is a story about displacement, family commitments and honour, and the universal feelings of love and loss. The plot begins in Palestine in 1948 and spans events of the
years leading up to 1970. It deals with struggles of Palestinian refugees of that time within the context of family ties and unconventional romance to reflect the complex world of Palestinians living in perpetual exile. Qatar Tribune’s Lezima Gomes quizzed the author about the book and what inspires her. Excerpts: Q. What inspired you to write this
book? How long has it taken? A. As a child of a refugee Palestinian father, I always wanted to tell the story of what happened to his generation – scream it out loud if I could. Anger and frustration at the injustice of it all accompanied me through the years, much like most Palestinians who grew up watching their parent(s) try to move forward, while clinging to a land – a world – often described as perfect or
Lilas Taha, author of Bitter Almonds, signs an agreement for her second book, Lost in Thyme, with HBKU Press Executive Director Bachar Chebaro.
magical, yet unreachable. Living in exile, my father carried his country in his heart and managed to plant its seed in mine and my brother’s. Hope flourished, and I arrived at adulthood determined to do the same for my children. On my father’s last visit to me in the US, however, I saw something different in his eyes, a lacking lustre, something was missing. I struggled to engage him, to bring him back from the despair. It pained me to see him that way; knowing he would not return to his beloved Palestine. So I started writing about his familiar world, involving him in discussions and challenging him to express more, talk more, remember more. Our daily sessions, when I read to him what I had written the night before, became our time together. We argued a lot, stepped into dangerous emotional zones often, and sometimes, we sailed into happy places. I wanted to create characters he could connect with and care about, and describe events as he and others in his generation experienced them, not as history books recorded them. That was what inspired me to write this particular story, and after a year of writing, Bitter Almonds was born. Give us a synopsis of the book The book involves two main characters: Omar and Nadia. Omar is an orphaned