I did some quick reading to prepare for my interview of Mohamed Mughal, an emerging American writer whose fiction falls under the rubric of literary cubism. Mughal’s surreal storylines, often centered around motifs of religion and spirituality, are constructed through a variety of written media.
His first novel, Resolution 786, focuses on themes of loss, introspection and the absurdities of human experience. True to his cubist leanings, Mughal builds the novel’s plot through a succession of inter-reliant vignettes structured alternatively as e-mail messages, letters, poems, traditional narrative and a legal indictment. Although Mughal’s characters demonstrate existential tendencies, they lack the abject dispassion of typical existentialist protagonists such as those of Camus. Instead, Mughal’s characters experience and express feelings deeply and seem to be immersed in a rich potpourri of emotions ranging from elation to despair.
The first draft of Mughal’s second novel, Christmas in Mecca, is simultaneously a sequel and a prequel to Resolution 786. His voice as an American writer is unique in that he brings a perspective of liberal Islam into his writing.
Through our interview, I discovered that Mughal was born in 1963 to Indian parents settled in Uganda, Africa. In 1965 his family moved to London, England so that his father could complete his university education. The family returned to Uganda in 1967 where Mughal attended Kitante Primary School. In 1972, Idi Amin expelled Ugandans of Asian descent, seizing all properties, businesses and money. Given a militarily imposed 90-day deadline, Mughal’s family fled through Entebbe Airport to Naples, Italy, and subsequently arrived in the United States in November of 1972 as stateless refugees under the sponsorship of a Lutheran church. Mughal’s uncle, Mahmood Ilahi Mughal, was approached by a reporter upon arrival in the U.S. and is quoted in Time as saying, “I lost everything, but I am glad to be here. My two hands are here. They are my tools and I will rebuild again, with the help of Almighty God.” (“A Home for Ugandans,” Time Magazine, November 13, 1972).
Having read and enjoyed Resolution 786, I can now see that Mughal’s childhood in Africa is a substantial basis for the fictional childhood of his central character, Adam Hueghlomm. Mughal’s pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Mecca, Varanasi, Sarnath, and Kathmandu, combined with travel throughout Europe and the continental United States, is strongly reflected in the varied backgrounds, scenes and characters in his fiction.
Although much of his writing is constructed around themes of religion and spirituality, Mughal’s personal beliefs on these subjects remain unknown. Let’s see if we can change that through the course of the interview.
Ed: Hi, Mohamed, and thanks for participating in our interview.
Mohamed: Thanks, Ed. Good to be here.
Ed: What’s it like being a writer in Harford County?
Mohamed: It’s good. We have an educated and increasingly diverse population in Harford County. We also have active writers’ groups that provide forums and feedback for first drafts and for ideas for storylines.
Ed: Do you actively participate in these groups and would you recommend them to other writers in Harford County?
Mohamed: I do participate, but sporadically, mainly due to my work schedule. Yes, I would highly recommend both groups to other Harford writers. I’ve cultivated friendships with members in each group and we exchange writing critiques via e-mail. The critiques aren’t feel-good backslapping sessions; I’ve gotten some insightful, frank comments through this process, observations and notes that have really helped improve my writing. The Harford Writers' Group has been in existence for over ten years and meets on the first Tuesday of each month at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in BelAir. The exception is the month of September, when they’ll meet on the second Tuesday. There’s also a critique group affiliated with the Maryland Writers' Association that meets at the Havre de Grace Library the third Thursday of each month. Both groups are fantastic. In addition to these groups, we have the Gunpowder Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. Our Harford County Branch was founded in July 2007, but the National organization dates back to 1897. And a young woman named Amy Bock who had a small group last summer. They no longer meet, but Amy may try bringing the group back together again next summer.
Ed: How long have you wanted to be a writer?
Mohamed: Ever since I first learned to write. We had British teachers in my elementary school in Uganda. One of them gave us writing assignments and I remember submitting a story about a series of car races where I’d lost the second one and so I described that race as “rotten.” She scribbled a critique of that word choice in the margin of my handwritten story – “Too American.” (laughs)
Ed: What writers influenced or inspired you?
Mohamed: Vonnegut for his courage and his untethered mind. Steinbeck for his lyricism and raw honesty. Camus for the depth of his ideas and his ornately nuanced descriptions of nature and humans.
Ed: Do you think any of those writers would have liked your writing?
Mohamed: I think that Vonnegut would have gotten a chuckle and really enjoyed it. I think Steinbeck would have thought that there’s hope for this fellow, especially if he gets his head out of the ethereal and into the gritty plight of the common man. Camus? (Mughal casts a far-off gaze, thinking). Camus…would…have…thought it’s juvenile and self-indulgent (laughter).
Ed: Really? Do you really think that that’s what Camus would have thought?
Mohamed: Yes. I don’t think he would have thought it’s bad writing, no, not at all. And I think he’d have recognized and respected the philosophical underpinnings of the work, but my scenes and characters have an element of empathy, involved emotion and laugh-out-loud humor that I just don’t think is Camus.
Ed: Other than fiction, what do you enjoy reading?
Mohamed: As you might guess, I enjoy books on religion and mythology. I also like history, biography, cosmology, astronomy, and the physical sciences…after all, I am a chemical engineer (laughs)…and language, of course.
Ed: What’s your writing process?
Mohamed: Serendipity, really. (stop and thinks). It’s difficult to operationalize creativity. If we could, we’d produce Picasso’s paintings or Michangelo’s David on a conveyor belt. That said, there are specific techniques available to artists of every medium. In my writing, I like to get a set of ideas down and then explore and expand them through prose. Sometimes the prose works, other times it’s crap. Start stringing words together – in the end, that’s the process. That’s about as simple or as complex as it gets. As R.A. Salvatore once wrote to me in an e-mail: “Writers write.”
Ed: Where did you get your ideas for Resolution 786?
Mohamed: The story started out as a concept for a play, a loosely assembled set of literary images that floated around on my desk on scraps of paper and little yellow stickies. This went on for about a year. The play carried a tentative title of “War Crimes” and was a courtroom drama with God on trial. In the midst of this never-finished draft, the Iraq War came about and the events of those days began to stand out in my consciousness. Eventually, those headlines wrapped themselves around “War Crimes,” turning the embryonic play into a cubist novel. See? Serendipity.
Ed: How did you manage to capture God so that you could put him on trial?
Mohamed: By showering him with tachyons, massless particles of pure energy that travel at superluminal speeds. We then used the principle of E = mC2 and adjusted energy input until “m” equaled 171 lbs, which, as you know, is the weight of God in earth’s gravitational field (laughs).
Ed: Some people claim that the Tetragrammaton is somehow embedded into your character’s name: “Adam Hueghlomm.” Is it?
Mohamed: (laughs). No. I only wish that the hidden meanings were so elegant. There is something else, though, that’s embedded in the name. I’ll let my readers discover it for themselves.
Ed: Any clues?
Mohamed: No. But one reader has e-mailed me with his correct deduction, so it’s there and it appears if you look at the name from the right angle.
Ed: Is it true that “786” is a clever play on “666,” the devil’s number?
Mohamed: No, not at all. “786” has a special meaning to some in the Muslim community and it’s a positive meaning. I’ll leave it at that.
Ed: Are there other special numbers in Resolution 786?
Mohamed: Yes. Pi – 3.1415926…the infinite number, the number without an end. There’s 40: years wandering in the desert; days and nights fasting in the wilderness; days and nights of the Great Flood. And 7: the number of days in a week; the number of revolutions that a pilgrim makes around the Kaaba at Haj. And then there’s 12. You can read about its significance when the Lord talks about it during his trial. At one point, the Lord says, “Cycles, symmetry and the number twelve are the basis of all creation.” Grady Harp, one of Amazon’s top reviewers, used that quote as the title for his review of Resolution 786.
Ed: What do you personally believe with regard to God and religion?
Mohamed: I don’t think that matters. What matters is the richness of variety and the depth of thought that I weave into the prose and ideas that form my writing.
Ed: But what do you personally believe with regard to God and religion?
Mohamed: It really doesn’t matter.
Ed: You’re not going to answer that question, are you?
Mohamed: No (chuckles; looks at me and winks).
Ed: I recently read on your blog that you’re no longer going to use “The End” at the end of your stories and novels. Can you explain that decision?
Mohamed: Sure. “The End” limits the contextual residence of my writing; it implies that an isolated universe is created within each piece of prose and that that world is immutable, irrefutable and final. It isn’t. I realized this when the current draft of my second novel, “Christmas in Mecca,” evolved into both a sequel and a prequel to my first novel. Nothing ends. My stories and novels depict fragments of experience that occur within the moment, but that are also nested within a dynamic sea of future and past. A focused lens into the past can provide valuable, revelatory insights into and about the present; a retrospective gaze from the realized future can redefine and more precisely account the broader implications of that same present. In the infinite plate tectonics of the cosmos, nothing stands alone, absolute, stoic and stone. So I won’t use “The End” when I finish novels and stories…but what then to use, if anything? I thought of “etc.” Etcetera. A literal translation from Latin is “and the rest.” Common meanings include “and so forth” or “and other things.” I think this better captures my sense of my writing…and the rest…and so forth…and other things. So from now on, my stories and novels won’t end with “The End.” They’ll end with “etc.”
Ed: Are you working on anything new?
Mohamed: Yes. My second novel started out with the title Allah hu Akbar, Harold Hawkins. As of last month, it’s been re-titled Christmas in Mecca. I’m also working on a non-fiction title, Creating Fiction: A Hands-on, Practitioner’s Guide.
Ed: Can you tell me more about the novel?
Mohamed: Sure, in as much as someone can talk to an evolving work in progress. The main characters are the writer of Genesis, Al-Lah Om Elohim; Harold Hawkins, an American intelligence specialist who defects to Iran; and Alan Weinstein, an astronomer searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. I also have appearances by Adam Hueghlomm, Becca Gowetski, a race of extraterrestrials and Friedrich Nietzsche, to name a few.
Ed: Sounds interesting, certainly a lot of fodder there for a story. How about the non-fiction title?
While doing research for my second novel, I realized that I’d developed a set of techniques for creating fiction that may be useful to other writers. I decided to catalogue and describe these techniques in Creating Fiction: A Hands-on, Practitioner’s Guide. So far the draft has chapters on the essentials of reading, developing ideas, constructing narrative, style and voice, and the utility of colleagues in what is otherwise a solitary undertaking. I also have a chapter titled “Kismet,” where I explain how characters can be born from the womb of the story.
Ed: Have you experienced that?
Mohamed: Yes. The custodian in Resolution 786 didn’t come from out of my head and onto the page. He was born from within the story itself.
Ed: When do you expect your new books to come out?
Mohamed: I hope to have both of them drafted by the end of 2009. I’ll polish and re-write and revise them through the first half of 2010 and have them ready for the reading public by late 2010. But, as Steinbeck said about our best laid plans…(laughs).
Ed: Thanks, Mohamed. I enjoyed speaking with you.
Mohamed: Great sharing thoughts with you, too, Ed. Take care.
You can read more about Mohamed's writing and upcoming events on his website --- click Website below and on his Facebook fan page.
