Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.
Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.
Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.
You learn a lot, writing fiction.
I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.