The Creation of Ramadan Ramsey

1999

So I’m at home—in New Orleans—pumping gas into my car at a neighborhood convenience store/filling station, when I witness a mild flirtation. An attractive African-American woman comes out of the store snacking on something. Was it really Lay’s potato chips, as fiction would later have it, or Cheetos? Don’t recall exactly. At any rate, as she is leaving, she turns and sees a handsome Middle Eastern fellow who works in the store trailing behind her. He’s at a respectable distance, but close enough to indicate he’s there for her. They seem to have some kind of minor history. Maybe they’ve exchanged eye contact before, a hello, a smile. But following the woman may well be the most forward he’s ever been with her. She sighs and says, “You gon stop…” He doesn’t say a word. But his facial expression softens and says: he wants to do a lot of things. Stopping is not one of them. I get into my car and drive off. I leave them there, not stopping.

1999-2012

For years, I don’t stop either. I think about the couple often—and the idea that these kinds of flirtations—relationships—are happening. Not just in New Orleans, but all over America. All over the world. Love across lines. Across borders, which have been erased by modernity, by the sophistication of the species. Like many, maybe most, I’d looked past the humanity of these men who, while my car filled with high octane on pump number whatever, had sold me Hershey bars and Doublemint, and counted out my change.

After seeing these lovers (in my mind), I begin occasionally asking various people I encounter, “Where are you from?” I have, I suppose, some half-ass notion that my nosiness will absolve me of the sin of disregard. I’m told: Iraq. Egypt. Pakistan. Turkey. But after September 11, 2001, the answers become more mysterious. “Morocco,” one man, suspicion in his eyes, says to me with a finality that indicates the conversation is over. I cease my inquiries. But the first man I’d asked had said, “Syria”—which would become the beacon for the novel.

2012

July. A traveler, I am in Istanbul on a vacation that, by sheer luck, coincides with Ramadan. During a boat ride on the Bosphorus, I think of Mark Twain. You know, a boy, some big water, adventure. I ask Defne, our local tour guide, if she knows Twain’s little hero. “I love Huck Finn!” she says, flashing a spontaneous smile of uninhibited literary appreciation. “Is there a Huck Finn on the Bosphorus?” I ask. She thinks for a minute, then says, “No.”

The next morning, before dawn, I am awakened in my hotel room by the call to prayer quaking the darkness outside. I have a panoramic view of the Bosphorus and a few passing ships are lighting the strait. As I stare into the night, I see him take flight—Ramadan, suspended in midair, leaping into his grandmother’s arms. And I begin typing into the Notes app in my iPhone the opening to RAMADAN RAMSEY. “Ramadan was blessed…” For years, I would explore just how and why.

2021

A writer flirts with a story and with a little luck, it flirts back. One might say to the other, “You gon stop.” But sometimes, as with me and this novel, the passion persists. Here’s to not stopping.

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