An Interview with Rajia Hassib

By Selin Gökcesu

Rajia Hassib was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and is the author of the novel In the Language of Miracles.

In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib is the story of the Al-Mehshawys, a Muslim family from Egypt. Nagla and Samir immigrate to New York in 1985, with their infant son Hosaaam, and Samir finds success as a physician in the suburbs of New Jersey, where the family has two more children, Khaled and Fatima. When Hosaam murders his girlfriend, Natalie, and takes his own life, the family members become outcasts in their community. In the Language of Miracles is a novel about individuals dealing with loss, grief, and shame in the aftermath of violence.

Selin Gökcesu

I read in previous interviews that you were moved by the events surrounding 9/11 in designing the plot and having the novel unfold around an act of violence. But, the act of violence in the book is very specific, and in some ways, very stereotypical: a young man kills his girlfriend and commits suicide. Can you tell us more about this choice, about its relationship to political violence at a larger scale, and its personal impact on the characters?

Rajia Hassib

While the aftermath of 9/11 was, indeed, the main reason I built the plot around an act of violence, I was never interested in a direct exploration of the political aspects of that particular terrorist attack. Instead, I wanted to explore how this one event shaped the lives of so many who were neither involved in it nor in any way responsible for it. As a Muslim living in the United States since before 9/11, I saw firsthand how this terrorist attack rattled the entire Muslim community in so many ways, and I wanted to investigate this on its most basic, human level.

To read the rest of this interview, visit Books Are Not a Luxury.

First published at Books Are Not a Luxury, January 2017

Tags: Muslim novels, Rajia Hassib, Selin Gökçesu, writing exercises