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Balancing
life and writing by Lilas Taha
Writing has a permanent place in my life. I write in
bursts of inspiration. I write in the early hours of the morning, or with a cup
of coffee on a slow afternoon, or late at night in bed. Any time I have an
idea, be it superbly ingenious, or painfully dull, I put it on paper or I tap
it on my laptop keyboard. I don’t have a schedule, and I don’t stress over my
word count. I write, whenever I can, and whatever comes to mind.
In my head, writing is my personal identifier. You know
when someone in a social gathering asks about what you do, and you launch into
the kind of job you hold, be it outside the home or inside? I always start with
being a mother as my first job, then depending on where I am in my life, I
qualify the answer with Engineer, or Domestic Abuse Advocate, or Cultural
Competency Trainer. But in my head, just as I think I’m still twenty-five years
old and twenty pounds lighter, I identify myself as a writer.
It isn’t easy to drop everything in hand and escape to
my writing world when inspiration strikes. I file the thought, the idea or the
image and I play it over and over in my mind until I am able to write it down.
Many times, after I have meticulously spelled it out, I give it another look
and find what I have on paper had nothing to do with what was in my head all
day. So frustrating! I blame the circumstance that kept me away from my desk
when all I wanted was to record the idea, I get angry at the world, curse
commitments and time limits, and then I start over. More often than not, the
final outcome becomes clearer and more satisfying.
Shadows of DamascusBy Lilas TahaPublisher: Soul Mate PublishingRelease Date: January 13, 2014Genre: Contemporary Romance/WarLength: 223 PagesASIN: B00HUZUG8YAbout the book:Bullet wounds, torture and oppression aren’t the only things that keep a man—or a woman—from being whole.Debt. Honor. Pain. Solitude. These are things wounded war veteran Adam Wegener knows all about. Love—now, that he is not good at. Not when love equals a closed fist, burns, and suicide attempts. But Adam is one who keeps his word. He owes the man who saved his life in Iraq. And he doesn’t question the measure of the debt, even when it is in the form of an emotionally distant, beautiful woman.Yasmeen agreed to become the wife of an American veteran so she could flee persecution in war-torn Syria. She counted on being in the United States for a short stay until she could return home. There was one thing she did not count on: wanting more.Is it too late for Adam and Yasmeen?
Excerpt
CHAPTER
1 — A FAVOR
Platteville,
Wisconsin
Five
years later
A
handwritten, old-fashioned note, not an email or even a phone call. Before he
opened the envelope, Adam checked the handwriting for a clue to its sender. The
writing wasn’t familiar. The letter had no return address, only a five-day-old
stamp from Turkey.
At
the kitchen table in his two-story farmhouse in the late afternoon, he studied
the unopened envelope. He ran his fingertips over the name, Adam Wegener, a
name he officially adopted as soon as he turned eighteen, right before he
joined the army. Wegener was his mother’s maiden name, and he decided to use it
the day he severed ties with his father. Adam would no longer be a Shipman.
When
he came home after his medical discharge from the army, his small circle of
friends downsized to one, Jonathan. As for family, his mother passed away and
his father lost the privilege the day Adam threw him out. Who cared enough to
send him a handwritten letter?
With
a heavy heart, he opened the envelope. He read over the slanted handwriting,
some words crossed out, as if written in a hurry. He locked on the signature,
O.R. Pemssy. He sounded out the name but it triggered no familiarity. He folded
the letter, placed it on the table, and clasped his hands on the wooden
surface.
Five
years since he left Iraq. These written words threw him head first into that
time. A stream of images filled the space around him. A slide show of faces,
proud soldiers, weapons in hands. Faces twisted in pain, many stamped with the
stillness of death that soon followed.
The
sun made its final dip behind the horizon. The letter on the table riffled in
the light breeze from the window. He picked it up and read it again. The signed
name didn’t match the face in his head. Big brown eyes, dark thick eyebrows and
a matching mustache. Fadi Jabir, the Syrian interpreter with the annoying
accent.
Before
he shipped off to Germany, Fadi paid him a visit while he lay bandaged and disoriented
from morphine in the Army base hospital. His jumbled memories of that visit
scattered like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He remembered Fadi’s face, a painful
handshake, and a promise being made. The rest dispersed into emptiness. He owed
his life to Fadi, no question about it. But whose signature was this? Who was
O. R. Pemssy?
Unfolding
his body from the chair, he switched the lights on, and went for a glass of
water. Fadi’s selfless act invaded his mind many times over the years. Attempts
to locate him through army records failed, information blocked by military
regulation. Further inquiry led him to the name of the private company that
contracted Fadi from Syria to U.S. troops in Iraq, but the company dissolved
and no credible records remained.
Now,
he had this mysterious letter in his hands, asking him to start from the
beginning, and no way to do a damn thing about it. Exhaling in frustration, he
took his cold glass outside to the front porch.
The
summer breeze, pregnant with the intoxicating smell of flowering jasmine, took
him back to the time he planted the bush with his mother. He must have been
seven, and he remembered her excitement when she found it in a nursery. Later,
he helped her plant the apple tree in front of her bedroom window, and a couple
of years after, the pear tree by the barn.
He
collected a few jasmine flowers and went inside. He filled a small bowl with
water and deposited the delicate collection. The fragrance filled the area
around him. He walked to the table and thumbed the letter again. How could he
reach Fadi?
He
flipped the paper to check the backside, nothing. Holding it against the light,
he searched for clues, and then dropped the letter, and picked up the envelope.
The
Turkish stamp and the date seemed legitimate, nothing more to see in that. He
concentrated on the signature, the only thing that didn’t make sense.
Adam
wrote the words of the signature on separate lines, trying combinations for the
letters, comparing them with Fadi’s full name. After an hour of futile work, he
massaged his stiff neck. He opened his laptop and searched the name in its
entirety, then separately. Nothing solid surfaced.
The
evening sky melted into night, and his frustration intensified. He pinned the
letter on the fridge door with a magnet and paced.
Fadi
wanted something. Something dangerous. Otherwise why the secrecy and the
ambiguity, using an alias? He wanted Adam to contact him, so how could he do
that? Write a letter? There was no address. Call him? No number. Start from the
beginning. Start what? Start counting?
He
took a pencil and circled the letters, counting them and assigning numbers in
succession. The first O is at number two. The R is either forty-seven on the
first line or one on the second line. The P is at number six on the third line.
He worked through the script.
The
process gave him a number with ten digits starting with area code 216. Was this
possible? Did he crack a code? Fadi knew how his crazy mind worked? Knew him
well enough to send him a coded number? Why? What was so secretive?
He
went online to find which city the area code covered. Cleveland, Ohio. Jumping
to his feet, he snatched the phone handset and checked his watch. Past
midnight. His fingers hovered over the dial keys. Was it too late to call? What’s
the worst that could happen? Get cursed at? What if this wasn’t Fadi, and the
whole thing was a set up? Who would screw with him like that?
He
returned the handset and drew back. It couldn’t be this urgent if the sender
chose a coded letter to contact him. Better wait until morning, when he had
some rest and could think clearer.
He
headed upstairs. Passing through the living room, he looked around, feeling the
emptiness, recalled memories often more bitter than sweet. He stopped in front
of the mantle and turned his attention to the framed document above, his
grandfather’s will, leaving him the farm. About halfway down the paper, one
line was underlined. Adam ran his eyes on the typed words out of habit. He
committed them to memory years ago. His grandfather explained the decision of
passing the farm to Adam instead of his only son in two simple sentences.
Fred
Shipman is a bad seed and shall not inherit The Shipman Farm. Full ownership
shall be instated with my grandson, Adam Shipman.
Dejected
and mentally drained, he moved on to his room, and set his alarm clock to four
a.m. He’d use the extra thirty minutes before milking time to go over the
letter again, see if he missed anything. Maybe he was taking this coding thing
too far. Maybe there was no number there, and he was just as obsessive as he’d
always been. And maybe he was on to something, something that would cut through
this tedious life of his.
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
Lilas
Taha is a writer at heart, an electrical engineer by training, and an advocate
for domestic abuse victims by choice. She was born in Kuwait to a Syrian mother
and a Palestinian father, and immigrated to the U.S. as a result of the Gulf
war in 1990. She earned a master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the
University of Wisconsin- Madison. There, Lilas met her beloved husband and true
friend, and moved with him to Sugar Land, Texas to establish a family. She is
the proud mother of a daughter and a son. Instead of working in an industrial
field, she applied herself to the field of social safety, working with victims
of domestic violence.
Pursuing
her true passion for creative writing, Lilas brings her professional interests,
and her Middle Eastern background together in her debut fictional novel,
Shadows of Damascus.
Website: www.lilastaha.com
Twitter:
Follow @LilasTaha https://twitter.com/LilasTaha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lilastaha
Email: info@lilastaha.com
