Did you write any of these stories-or similar ones-at that age, for school assignments? How did you come up with this format? Much of the book is presented in the form of Daniel responding to his teacher’s writing prompts.
When I wrote in the voice of a raw young narrator trying to be oblique, trying to talk around things-well, his failure produced a more transparent voice with more transparent emotions. I had spent about eight years, off and on, struggling through adult versions of my story when my good friend Stacey Barney, finally said: “You know this is a middle-grade novel?” So then I put it in the voice of a 12-year-old. I’m lucky that I had time to process what happened to me in childhood, but when I told it from an adult point of view it was a bit removed. I tried writing it first as an adult novel and then as an essay collection, but neither one really worked. When I started to write the book, I was a 20-something adult.
I didn’t actually start writing the day that I learned of his death, but that’s when I started counting my memories. He said, “Your grandfather has a photo of you on his mantel and he prays to it every day that you will come back.” And of course I am filled with guilt that I never did make it back to Iran. The other one I have was told to me by my father. I started to do an accounting of which memories of my grandfather were mine and which were told to me and realized I only have that one. I broke down right away, because I had only the one memory of him-the one that opens the book-and I realized I would never have another. I was in the bathroom when my father called with the news because that was the only place to get any privacy in that apartment. I was living in an apartment in Brooklyn with three other guys. I studied writing at NYU, and was working on some other books when my grandfather died. I learned the power of storytelling early on from having to tell my story over and over. And the facts always stayed the same but the order in which I told them changed all the time. I was an impatient little kid, talking as fast as I could because one question always led to another. I became a writer because when you come to Oklahoma from Iran, you’re constantly being asked: “What are you doing here?” You have to explain yourself a lot. I’ve been doing this book ever since I got to this country, thinking about it since I was 10 years old. What was it about his death that propelled you into writing it? And why do you think it took more than a decade for you to tell this story? The author’s note to this book says you began writing it when your grandfather died 13 years ago.
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