An Interview with Gian Sardar, author of Take What You Can Carry: A Novel
by Alan Ali Saeed
SAEED: First, let me say thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. It is very kind of you, as I am sure you are very busy.
SARDAR: Thank you so much for speaking with me, I appreciate it!
SAEED: Take What You Can Carry is your second novel. Your first novel, You Were Here, explored your European-American background. I wondered if there was any particular reason behind the order in which you wrote the two novels? Did you feel you needed to build up to telling a story set in Iraqi Kurdistan? Second, they have very different settings and characters. Do you think they share any similar themes or should they be seen as quite separate entities?
SARDAR: That’s a very interesting question, and I think “building up” to tell this story is a good way of putting it. I always knew I wanted to write a novel based on my father’s stories, but it also felt like the most important story I could tell, so I was nervous because I knew that I’d get one shot at it. I think I wanted to be sure I was ready. It took me realizing that my desire to tell the story while my father was living, and my longing for it to be out in the world, outweighed my tendency to play it safe to decide to go for it. In terms of themes, I think they were very, very different books, and while YOU WERE HERE took place in Minnesota, where my mother is from, the story was very much an invention and not so much anchored or tied to her heritage the way TAKE WHAT YOU CAN CARRY is with my father’s background.
SAEED: I think in an interview you said you did not grow up speaking Kurdish (Sardar, 2021)? Was that your father’s decision and if so, why? Did you learn it later on?
SARDAR: He taught us a bit, but as my mother is American and didn’t speak Kurdish, Kurdish just wasn’t spoken in our house unless we had visitors. I wish I knew Kurdish fluently, but my Kurdish is very, very limited.
SAEED: I was wondering how much you feel part of a Kurdish diaspora or if you prefer to think of yourself as Kurdish-American. You say in your interview (Sardar, 2021) that: ‘[u]ltimately, I’m a non-native to my own ancestral worlds’. That makes it sound as if you do not have an easy sense of Kurdish identity? (Even though I gather you have gone back to Iraqi Kurdistan both for research and to visit family).
SARDAR: This is a very interesting and tricky question. Perhaps some of it is my insecurity, but I’m well aware of just how vastly different my childhood was versus my Kurdish cousins, for instance, and that’s due to my also being an American. I think because of that, the way I think of myself will always include that word. Even when going back to Kurdistan to visit family, I felt a profound connection but also the differences.
SAEED: Bearing in mind you didn’t speak Kurdish as a child the feat of memory in recalling what your relatives said and Kurdistan in the 1970s is all the more remarkable. You say in the interview (Sardar, 2021): ‘I took notes of everything—clothing, speech, traditions, landscapes, even inflections of words’. Is this why there is a kind of luminosity of details in the descriptions of Iraqi Kurdistan in the novel? As if you are trying like Proust or Joyce did to wring every drop of detail out of a memory to make it visceral, to bring it back to the present?
SARDAR: Well, first, thank you. I appreciate that. I think I tend to be a very descriptive writer, in general, but with this book I felt it was key to make the world come through as clearly as possible, because I knew that – for the most part – my readers would not have been so lucky to have visited Kurdistan. For many, this would be their one and only exposure to the land and to the people. So yes, I certainly did want to eke out as much as I could to submerge the reader into this world. When someone says they felt like they “were there” when reading my book, I’m thrilled. That sort of immediacy makes stories relatable, and since I wanted people to feel connected with my characters and the world they inhabited, what better way than to immerse them into the world with sensory language?
SAEED: What made you decide to write a historical novel rather than to set it in the present? Was it because you felt American readers didn’t know enough about the history of Iraqi Kurdistan? Or did you perhaps feel the existing historical accounts did not give the sense of ‘being there’ that you wanted to capture in fiction?
SARDAR: I went back and forth on when to set the novel, but ultimately the fact that I was there in the late 70s and had photos and memories and accounts I could draw upon was what finally swayed me. One’s childhood is often sort of cast in gold, through the magic of memory, and so there was an appeal to the time just for nostalgic reasons as well. I also think there’s something about capturing the past, only to have people realize that not much has changed. “This could’ve been written about now” is something I take as a compliment, when I’ve read it, because it means I’ve (hopefully) captured the essence of an experience, and hopefully that lends itself to being relatable.
SAEED: I know you have said previously that you did personal research through visits and talking to family in Iraqi Kurdistan. However, did you have any favourite historical novels that influenced you and which served as a literary resource? What historical accounts about Kurdistan did you use for your research, if any? Were any of your sources in Kurdish?
SARDAR: I read many books about the Kurds, as well as websites with personal accounts. Unfortunately, none were in Kurdish. Two books that come to mind are MY KURDISH BIKE by Alesa Lightbourne, and MY FATHER’S RIFLE, by Hinar Saleem.
SAEED: The novel is written in the third person yet is mostly focalised from Olivia’s point of view. Why did you choose this mode of narration, as opposed to say first-person narration or multiple points of view and voices?
SARDAR: I tend to like third person in general, over first person. I felt like sticking with just Olivia’s point of view would enhance the suspense and the feeling she had of being an outsider, because the reader, as well, would be working with limited knowledge and understanding. Being the only person to speak a language can be very daunting and trying, and I wanted the reader to experience that right alongside Olivia.
SAEED: When I reviewed Take What You Can Carry for Prairie Schooner, I was conscious of a sense of dual audiences. The Kurdish reader would know for example, what Iraqi Kurdistan was like in the late 1970s, while the American reader would not. The character of Olivia seems naïve to the Kurdish reader but arguably less so to the American one. The two readerships perceive events differently because of their level of historical knowledge. Were you conscious of writing for two distinct audiences when you wrote the novel?
SARDAR: I grew up surrounded by too many people who didn’t know who the Kurds were, or with people whose only understanding was from headlines and news snippets. You’re right that I don’t need to tell the Kurdish reader what being a Kurd is like, so my primary focus was reaching out to that unfamiliar audience in order to include them in the experience, as much as I could. Of course, reading a story that one can fully relate to and understand can be wonderful, but one of fiction’s greatest gifts is the ability to transport and expose, so my desire was to bring the Kurds to life for people who had no real familiarity with them.
SAEED: Some reviews of the novel focus on Olivia being ‘privileged’ and I know this is something of an obsession with American liberals who seem to love being guilty. But in reality, this is hardly Olivia’s fault and she is from a rather ordinary working-class background. In fact, I wondered if reviewers have been somewhat too hard on her in the novel, as after all, she shows a great deal of gumption going to visit someone in a country she knows practically nothing about and where she doesn’t speak the language. I also thought her desire to become a news photographer, which is so difficult because of her gender, didn’t get picked up on enough by many reviewers. Americans tend to take feminist achievement for granted in a way that Kurds do not. She is more resourceful and more of a feminist than they give her credit for. What do you think about Olivia?
SARDAR: I loved Olivia and watching her grow. I think that what a lot of readers forget is that information was very different in the 1970s. Now, it’s much harder to be naïve to a certain situation, because we can go online and learn everything we want to, or tune into one of hundreds of news stations, or even scroll through Twitter feeds and read testimonies and experiences before they hit the mainstream. The news, now, is everywhere. That was not the case in Olivia’s time. Also, what people might not fully grasp is the effect that censorship plays. My mother, for instance, is and always has been a very, very intelligent woman, someone who at the time of our family trip to Kurdistan was working as a probation officer. She was certainly not naïve, and yet even she didn’t grasp the full magnitude of what she was walking into when we went to Kurdistan in the 70’s - in part because the situation was never relayed to us accurately, and also because my father filtered her expectations through his own experience, and his sense of danger was very, very different than my mother’s – and he was the one telling her what to expect. The same would be said of Delan and Olivia. So yes, Olivia may seem naïve, but I agree that it wasn’t her fault, and that people may not be accounting for these other factors when considering this. In terms of her being privileged, I agree she was. Though she was middle-class, she was still an American who took much for granted, and then was faced with a life that made her aware of that fact. And yes, thank you; she was certainly very, very challenged as a woman in a male profession.
SAEED: Delan is portrayed as more liberal, caring, and progressive than many of the American men in Olivia’s workplace. Were you conscious that in your representation of him you were challenging the orientalist stereotypes of Muslim men in American fiction? Or did you feel you were just portraying a progressive Kurdish man accurately and the Kurds themselves do not really fit into the idea of Said’s theory of orientalism?
SARDAR: Delan was very much modelled on or inspired by my father, who went against most American’s views of men from the Middle East. And though I knew it would challenge many people’s views, I also had first-hand experience with the real-life embodiment of someone like Delan, who was Kurdish and liberal and progressive and went against the stereotypical grain, and that was the story I wanted to tell. There is no “one size fits all” with people. The Kurds are unique in so many ways, and so is my character. That was definitely a point I wanted to make.
SAEED: Delan is very reticent about his experiences in Iraqi Kurdistan. This of course makes the suspense before they arrive all the greater. But I wondered if you were also trying to say something about the experience of Kurdish exile and a sense of a kind of ‘survivor guilt’ as Delan (and Iraqi Kurds who lived in exile) didn’t live through the terrible events of the war with the Iraqi regime.
SARDAR: Definitely. I witnessed it with my father, who left Kurdistan in the ‘60s and therefore wasn’t subjected to Saddam Hussein the way his family was. And while every parent wants their child to have an easier life, and an easier road to travel, with that comes a child who very well could feel guilty about their lot in life compared to their parents. Combine that with leaving home, and being gone while those “left behind” are forced to endure difficulties and even atrocities, and it can make for a very mixed blessing. It absolutely is a sort of survivor’s guilt. That conflict was something I hadn’t seen explored very much at all, and so it was definitely an element I wanted to incorporate.
SAEED: Is there any particular reason, beyond the autobiographical, you chose a cross-cultural love story to create a narrative about 1970s Iraqi Kurdistan?
SARDAR: The cross-cultural experience is one I think is pretty relatable. And since I saw the interplay of cultural differences at work in my own family, I have always been interested in it. Those differences can also make for some good inherent conflict, and conflict is always key in a story.
SAEED: I think it is amazing that the love between Delan and Olivia survived the extreme situation that develops in the novel. I was wondering how you felt these two characters grew and developed through the course novel. Do they learn from one another or is it only Olivia who learns from Delan?
SARDAR: I definitely feel that they both learned from each other, though I suppose Olivia’s journey is more evident as we’re in her point of view but we also see her enormous change from the start to the end. But I think that Olivia affects Delan as well, including by challenging him to channel his experiences and what he’s going through.
SAEED: Something that’s struck me, but perhaps I am wrong, is that the novel turns on an opposition between the U.S.A. and Iraqi Kurdistan. In the novel, California specifically appears evanescent, and ephemeral compared to the very visceral reality of Kurdistan. When characters from many different nations and regions are all drunk at a party in Los Angeles dancing to the Eagles’ song ‘Hotel California’, all seem adrift, semi-hypnotised in a rich, but unreal world. Is this the sense you were trying to evoke for structural and thematic reasons in the novel and does it draw on existing descriptions of California as an element of America’s cultural imaginary?
SARDAR: Yes, definitely. I wanted there to be a contrast. California truly is a land of dreamers – of hard workers as well, but it’s often been painted as a place where dreams come true. It’s golden – the Golden State. There’s an element of escapism in California, with people supposedly able to strike it rich or become famous, but also an aspect of things not always being as they appear (this is a land of sets and facades, after all). It is, for sure, a rich and unreal world.
SAEED: The novel’s description of the Iraqi-Kurdish landscape seems very detailed and lyrical. I really felt the dust of summer and the beauty of our mountains. Was this from your own observation or did you also draw on the existing Kurdish literary tradition?
SARDAR: First, thank you so much. Everything is drawn from my own observations and experience. The Iraqi Kurdish landscape is truly stunning and inspiring, so it wasn’t hard to get swept away with details.
SAEED: Considering the extent and wide range of the Kurdish diaspora, there are still relatively few texts written in English. I think of your novels and I think of Ava Homa’s Daughters of Smoke and Fire, and also of poets like Choman Hardi. Most Kurds still prefer to write in their own language as this is an important part of Kurdish identity, but of course the problem is very little of this is translated into international languages like English. Do you think English will become a literary language of the Kurdish diaspora (among others) in the future, say in the same way it is for the Indian diaspora or for many Africans?
SARDAR: That’s an interesting question. I think it might.
SAEED: What has been the reaction to your novel from American readers? Has this differed at all from those readers with a Kurdish background?
SARDAR: I’ve been very pleased with the reaction from both sets of readers, and have been extremely happy upon reading reviews in which someone mentions that their eyes are now open to a new experience, or that they’re aware of just how lucky they are.
SAEED: Your novel is only currently available in English. This leaves out those Kurds who cannot read English. I think there are many who would find the novel fascinating and moving. Are there plans to translate it into Kurdish, or even perhaps Arabic in the longer run? (After all, it is a story that has much to say to the Arabs of Iraq as well.)
SARDAR: As of now I’m unaware of any plans, but I would certainly love to see it translated into Kurdish or even Arabic!
SAEED: It may be too early to ask this but do you have any plans to directly revisit the Kurdish-American experience in fiction? For example, I wondered about what it was like for you to grow up as part of the Kurdish-American diaspora. I grew up in the British-Kurdish diaspora myself, although I live in Suleimani now, and your book made me wonder how much the Kurdish diaspora really has in common. We tend to talk rather blithely about our language and traditions, like Kurdish dancing, but is that hiding our differences in terms of experience?
SARDAR: Again, such an interesting question. I imagine the Kurdish diaspora has a lot in common, but carries with them the imprint of their current place and of course the effects of their own unique experiences. At our core, I think, is longing. Longing for something that we can’t have, or longing for a deeper understanding of the generations that came before us, or even longing for a land that we will never know first-hand the way our family did. For Kurds, the land is a part of who we are. Land that sustained our families or hid them, land where our ancestors were born and died. Mountains they knew like the backs of their hands. To be away from those mountains is no small thing, and to be a part of the diaspora and grow up only in their distant shadow, so to speak, would certainly lead to a longing. And though I don’t have any plans to write something like that now, anything is possible!
References
Sardar, Gian. (2021) ‘Exploring My Disparate Cultures in Fiction Helped Me Better Understand Them Both’. Literary Hub. Online: https://lithub.com/exploring-my-disparate-cultures-in-fiction-helped-me-better-understand-them-both/
Gian Sardar was born and grew up in Los Angeles to a Kurdish father and an American mother from Minnesota. She studied creative writing at Loyola Marymount University and is the author of the novels Take What You Can Carry: A Novel (Lake Union Publishing, 2021) and You Were Here (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2017), as well as the coauthor of the memoir Psychic Junkie (2006). Take What You Can Carry: A Novel is one of the first novels in English to depict the life of the Iraqi Kurdish community during the tumultuous horrors of war that engulfed that region of Iraq during the 1970s. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. Her website has further information: https://www.giansardar.com/
Dr. Alan Ali Saeed is Associate Professor of English literature at Al Zahra College of Women, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. He has a BA (Hons) from Sulaimani University (2004), an MA with merit (London University 2009), a PhD on Bergson and British modernist, stream of consciousness women's writing (Brunel University 2016), and a PGCHE (Falmouth 2021) in university teaching. He is also an AFHEA. He has published on British modernists such as Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell, T.S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley and also on contemporary British fiction, as well as Anglophone writing about Iraqi Kurdistan.
See his publications here: https://sites.google.com/a/univsul.edu.iq/alan-ali-saeed/publications
Email: alan.ali.saeed@gmail.com