Bride of the Sea is Eman Quotah’s debut novel. Spanning decades and told from various points of view, this novel tells the story about what can happen with a single, life-altering choice. Muneer and Saeedah are married, expecting their first child. Soon after Hanadi is born, Muneer returns to Saudi Arabia and Saeedah stays in Cleveland with her daughter. Afraid Muneer will come back and take Hanadi away, Saeedah makes the choice to take her daughter and flee. Muneer never gives up searching for Hanadi, and her life unfolds in surprising ways, leaving her to discover what family means, what it can be, and how one can create it on their own terms. Quotah graciously emailed with me about her novel.
This is a story about family, the surprising twists of family and parent-child relationships, and ultimately, what family means to us and how it shapes us. For me, it started off as one story and ended as quite another, in a beautiful way. What was the inspiration for this book?
A family friend went through what my character Muneer experienced. His ex-wife abducted his daughter, and he didn’t see her for many years. I knew that story as a kid, and when I was a young adult, I learned that father and daughter had finally been reunited. I started to think about what it would be like to meet the father you thought had abandoned you, or who you might even have thought was dead. I started writing a fictional version of that family. I wanted to show all the ripples; for the father, for the mother, for the daughter, for the relatives and friends on the sidelines.
I also was inspired by growing up in Jidda with a huge family, eleven aunts and uncles and dozens of first cousins. I’ve never read a Saudi family saga, and so I wanted to write one.
You wrote a piece back in 2017 about how more Muslim stories have always been needed—not just in response to Trump’s travel ban. Since that piece, have you seen more Muslim stories? What would you like to see in the coming years?
I think we have seen more Muslim stories in the U.S., especially in children’s fiction, over the past five to 10 years. That’s anecdotal, I haven’t counted them, but it definitely feels like it. You have authors like Samira Ahmed, Sabina Khan, Saadia Faruqi, Hena Khan, lots of others. In adult fiction, you have Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us and Sahar Mustafah’s The Beauty of Your Face, two novels that have characters who are deeply Muslim. Not in the problematic way that we’re used to seeing in Western literature and film, but in a really human way. Ms Marvel, the comic book series about a Pakistani American teen superhero, is going to be a television show soon. We have the Hulu show Ramy about an Egyptian American Muslim guy and his family and buddies. And I love Misha Euceph’s podcast Tell Them I Am. All the guests are Muslim, but the stories they tell are about small moments in life that changed them, not about being Muslim per se.
Of course, I don’t want to discount the Muslim stories that predate the past few years. People like standup comedian Maz Jobrani and novelist and essayist Laila Lalami have been at it for a long time. And lots of Muslim stories come out of places other than the U.S. It’s a lot easier now to find lists of books and movies by and about Muslims than it used to be, so I encourage people to explore and learn more. There are some great anthologies of Muslim writing, too.
I also want to emphasize that when I say Muslim stories, I don’t just mean stories about Muslims. I mean stories by Muslims. There are still a lot of Muslims in America struggling to get their art into the world. They need to be supported.
This is your debut novel, but you’ve published short stories for various outlets and also nonfiction pieces. Do you find the experience writing fiction and nonfiction to be different at all?
I hadn’t really thought about it that much until now! But actually, I do think writing fiction and nonfiction are different for me. When I write essays, I can often bang them out in a couple of writing sessions. I mean, I tend to write very short nonfiction pieces, and I don’t write them that often. Sometimes, I’ll find an outlet that I think I can target and write about something I think would appeal to them. Something I’ve wanted to write about, maybe, but now I see where it could find a home.
Fiction takes longer to write for me, generally. Mostly because I write novels, which take years, but even short stories seem to take a while to get just right, or to want to live in my head for a while.
Also, when I’m writing nonfiction, I write and rewrite sentences in my head. The ideas take over my brain. But with fiction, it’s the characters who move in. I think about them all the time when I’m in a fiction-writing groove.
How did you first get into writing?
I came to writing as a reader. I was a bookworm as a kid, and I wanted to do what the authors of my favorite books did: write something that would move people and stay with them.
What were your favorite books growing up?
My absolute favorite author growing up was Robin McKinley and my favorite book by her was The Blue Sword. I took it out from my neighborhood library in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, one summer, because I loved the cover of a veiled warrior on a horse with a flaming blue sword. The main character is an orphaned girl who becomes a sword-wielding, magical hero, and like me, she’s mixed-race. That’s something I don’t remember finding in other book characters in those days.
Do you have a writing routine? If so, what does that look like?
I’m more about goals than routines. Like, last year, one of my goals was to revise a middle-grade manuscript I had written. So, I tried to set a pace that would enable me to get through the chapters. Sometimes that meant writing three to four days a week, usually evenings and weekends.
But also, in the first four months of last year I got my job to let me work four days a week. During those months, my routine was to write on Thursdays. If I was on a roll, maybe I would want to write on the weekend, too, but Thursday was the dedicated day. And most Thursdays, I would have a goal for what I wanted to accomplish that day.
Goals keep me focused. I’m not super strict about meeting the arbitrary deadlines I set for myself. But at the same time, I try to hold myself accountable. If I tell myself I’m going to do something by June and that doesn’t happen, I think about what the next best deadline is. September, October. Whatever.
How do you think the creative community can support women, and mothers, especially?
Publish us. Pay us. Solicit our work. Don’t sexually harass us.
Yes. I think with #metoo, there was a brief period where it seemed like things were changing, but I’m not sure that’s been a lasting theme.
Unfortunately not.
What are you struggling with, right now, as a parent and as a writer?
As a parent, it’s the effect of the pandemic on my kids, who miss their schools and friends. In the fall, they were able to do socially distanced bike rides and stuff, but now with the colder weather and worsening COVID-19 rates, we’re back to virtual playdates. As a writer, I’m struggling with all the mixed joy and anxiety of finally having people read my book.
What books inspire you, and what are you reading right now?
So many books inspire me! I read Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family as a teen, and it remains my touchstone for books about family. A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi inspired me when I read it recently because it’s such a feminist novel—a novel that actually talks about feminism—and because of the way it portrays a culture, and a family, changing over time. Right now, I’m reading One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney and Negotiations by Destiny O. Birdsong.
What’s on the horizon for you? This year, my goal will be either to totally reimagine another middle-grade manuscript that’s been on the backburner or to start something completely new—an Arab-American-Hollywood-historical novel.
Author photo credit: Alex Chen