A Conversation with PEN America Best Debut Short Story Author Emily Chammah

On August 22, Catapult will publish PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017, the inaugural edition of an anthology celebrating outstanding new fiction writers published by literary magazines around the world. In the weeks leading up to publication, we’ll feature a Q&A with the contributors, whose stories were selected for the anthology by judges Marie-Helene Bertino, Kelly Link, and Nina McConigley, and awarded PEN's Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Submissions for the 2018 awards are open now.

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Emily Chammah is an assistant editor at American Short Fiction, where she co-organizes the Insider Prize, a contest for incarcerated writers in Texas. She is the creator of the online travel guide Weird and Wonderful Cairo and works as an immigration paralegal in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. In “Tell Me, Please,” a teenager in Jordan secretly sends Facebook messages to a cousin she’s in love with.

I wouldn’t say that omar is my best friend, because I like to think we are closer than that, that there is something bringing us together more than any friendship could. While it is true that he is my cousin, I never feel as connected to the others—to Muhammad or Nour or Ahmed or Anais—or even to my older sister, Sousan. They don’t know, for example, that I prefer to drink my orange juice without sugar, that I’d rather eat falafels straight out of a paper cone than smashed inside a pocket of bread.

Omar’s mother and mine are sisters, and every afternoon before our fathers come home from work, they visit in the family’s sitting room with sugary tea and cigarettes. Omar and I sit on the carpeted floor at their feet. We draw pictures of pigeons and kites, or turn the pages of my father’s atlas, making up stories about the kinds of people who live in Greece and Turkey and Japan. For us, everyone is like our parents, drinking thick cups of coffee and praying five times a day. The differences between one people and another are often small and silly—Omar once said that children in Japan only wear yellow shoes and orange socks, and I once said that the women in Greece wear crowns of leaves on top of their hijabs. We roll on the carpet and laugh until our mothers tell us to hush, sending us to the roof, where we try to smoke the cigarettes we’ve pinched from their purses and practice calling our own azans.

Omar and I write each other notes in English, a language our parents cannot read. The letters are too rigid, too angled for them to see properly. My mother doesn’t know the difference between l’s and i’s, and though my father knows a handful of words—hello, thank you, no, yes—he hasn’t tried to sound out letters on a page since he was in school many years ago.

Which is lucky for Omar and me. We can tell stories and share secrets and dreams without the risk of being found out. But our English is weak, we do not know as many words as we do in Arabic, and, because of it, our secrets aren’t really secrets at all.

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Catapult Books: Where did you find the idea for this story?

Emily Chammah: This story started with Amal’s voice. The first few lines of the story were the first lines I wrote, and very quickly I fell into the rhythm and tone.

I studied Arabic for years, always feeling just short of fluency. My first experience in the Middle East was in Jordan, in 2010, and it was such a formative time for me, linguistically and emotionally. Many of my close female friends from the university weren’t allowed to come to Amman, where I was living, and so I would visit them in Zarqa and stay at my friend Amal’s home. (Though they share the same name, she and the fictional Amal are very different people.) Amal and I would drift from friend’s house to friend’s house, watching movies and dancing and, if their fathers weren’t home, smoking argeela and cigarettes. I learned so much during those times, but hadn’t really written anything about it, and so when (the fictional) Amal’s voice came to me, the story just seemed to unravel.

Most of the story takes place within Amal’s home. Why did you decide on this domestic setting?

Much of my time in Jordan was spent inside, in other people’s homes. I often felt jealous of my male classmates because of the freedom they and their friends had. I could have joined them, of course, but I realized that I was able to have these special, women’s only experiences they would never have. It felt natural for Amal and Sousan to spend most of their time at home, doing their own things but also just spending time with the other women in their family. Of course, I wanted a tension in this story to be how Amal begins to feel distant and alone in this environment, despite how supportive and loving it can be.

Amal and Omar bond over English as children, but when they meet as adults, her superior abilities reveal their faded connection. How did you decide to illustrate their relationship this way?

There is something romantic about learning a second language—in the beginning, before you become overwhelmed with irregular patterns or idioms, there is a sense of limitless possibility. Also, it is thrilling to be able to say something that most people around you do not understand, no matter how simple. But languages are also confusing! And speaking ability does not always correlate to comprehension. So many times I could understand those around me discussing how I didn’t understand something, but not having the vocabulary to clearly express myself.

I wanted Amal and Omar to communicate in English, first through notes, and later through Facebook, because I wanted to establish both a connection and a distance between them. Their connection is real, but once they grow up and no longer spend time together, their relationship is distorted by memory and, eventually, social media. I am still perplexed by Facebook, how we can know so many intimate details about people we haven’t spoken to in over a decade, and how, when we aren’t in contact with people we were once close to, we read into little things: a new profile picture, a shift in the tone of their status updates. My Jordanian friends were also always, always on Facebook. And so, like the domestic setting of the story, it felt natural for Amal and Omar to interact this way.

Amal’s heartbreak over an unrealized expectation is bittersweet and universal. Did you always know how the story would end?

The ending of this story was by far the most difficult for me. I knew Amal and Omar would not end up together, but that initially took form in an accidental, tragic death, which was so melodramatic and over the top. It took me years, and the help of Jennifer Acker, Editor in Chief of The Common, to realize that what would make a more compelling story was one in which Amal wasn’t merely a victim. Instead of Amal and Omar’s relationship ending through death, Jennifer suggested that Amal have some agency in the matter. And so her visit to Omar in Amman, the realization that he didn’t have the same fondness for the English language that she did—all of that came later, and I think the story and the characters are much better served because of it.

How long did it take you to write the story?

I had been working on the story for about two years when I received a positive response from The Common, but from the time I wrote the first sentences to publication, it was nearly three years.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

I am so grateful to have received the prize. Writing can be a lonely endeavor, and it is wonderful to now be connected to these other emerging writers. The award has also made my work more visible, and I’ve been in touch with a handful of potential agents.

What are you working on now?

I am (very, very slowly) working on a novel about the tensions between sisterhood and loyalty, belief and tradition, set in upstate New York.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

Personal recommendations are probably the most common source of new writing for me, mainly because I love the ability to discuss books with another person. I do not love reviews, but I am always curious about what kind of books are being reviewed. And literary journals like American Short Fiction (where I am an Assistant Editor), The Common, and One Story, browsing in small bookstores, and attending readings—these always lead me to something unexpected. I love the New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast, which doesn’t lead me to new writers as much as it does old stories I have never read before. I will also sheepishly admit that, several years ago, my favorite novel—Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi—was recommended to me by Amazon after some very disparate purchases.

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