In the fall of 2011, I was selected to take part in a ten-week writers’ residency at the University of Iowa. The International Writing Programme is 40 years old and has brought writers such as Sebastian Barry, Orhan Pamuk and John Banville to participate in the literary life of Iowa City, travel around America, and work on their own projects. Last year, H.M. Naqvi represented Pakistan, and this year, 37 novelists, poets, filmmakers and journalists from 32 different countries lived in Iowa City for three months. I was one of them.

The first week September 6, 2011

I’ve been in Iowa City for a week now and just getting used to everything, slowly and gradually. I’ve met all the writers, the staff of the IWP, and am starting to find my way around the city, a small university town that swells to capacity when all 30,000 students are in town. When the Hawkeyes play their home games at Kinnick Stadium, about 70,000 fans descend on the town, turning it into a sea of black and gold, the team colours. Even little children and dogs wear Hawkeye clothes, and everyone greets each other with “Go Hawks”.

I’m in a UNESCO City of Literature, the only one in North America. Others around the world include Dublin, Edinburgh, and Melbourne. The atmosphere here is incredible — everyone is a writer, or wants to be a writer, or is studying or teaching writing.

Bookstores are as popular as bars, the public library is always packed, as are public readings, something I’ve never seen before — usually audiences number in the single digits, and if you’re lucky, double ones. All well-known writers, American and international, make it a point to stop in Iowa City on their book tours. The written and spoken word is the predominant religion for Iowa City intellectuals, the same way the Hawkeyes are the religion for everyone who goes to university here. Launch of Granta 116

Last night was my first opportunity to speak in public here in Iowa City, at the Prairie Lights Bookstore for the launch of Granta 116, Ten Years Later. My co-speakers were Christopher Merrill, head of the IWP, Kevin Bloom, IWP participant from South Africa, ZZ Packer, one of America’s most famous contemporary writers who also teaches writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, a famed Salvadoran writer in exile who lives in Pittsburgh, works with the City of Asylum project, and teaches writing for Spanish writers at the Workshop.

There were about a hundred people and the atmosphere respectful and open, and a little emotional. I read from Ahmed Errachidi’s A Handful of Walnuts and drew parallels to a surah from the Quran, “The Ant”. Kevin read from the “Third Mate” and talked about China’s interest in Africa. Horatio and ZZ both read from Phil Klay’s short story, “Redeployment”.

It was a serious topic, more moving and powerful than I expected, in a more subtle way. Instead of celebrating the strength of the American nation, it was a sober reflection on how the rest of the world has been impacted by the 10 years following 9/11. And yet it was shot through with silver threads of hope — hope that the war will end, that the world can still redeem itself, that literature can illuminate the areas of darkness that these ten years have engendered.

Iowa City Public Library Panel September 9, 2011

Today I presented a paper at the Iowa City Public Library panel. The theme of the panel was 9/11: Ten Years Later, similar to the Granta event earlier in the week. I read a 3,000 word essay called “The Youngest Casualties,” about the psychological impact of the 10 years of war on Pakistan’s children. We are not officially at war with anyone, but we’ve been fighting the Taliban for years, and this has had a profound effect on life in the country, pretty much driving Pakistan straight into the ground. Today the country is more battered and broken than I can ever remember it being before.

About 60 people showed up to the event which included free pizza (maybe that’s why!). Hind (Jordan) presented a poetic prose piece by video, as she was away in Pittsburgh this weekend for the Jazz Poetry festival, a long meditation on sex, love, and 9/11, which wove in elements of her life as a Palestinian, forever fated to live in exile. “9/11 had invaded my bedroom,” she observed wryly, speaking about a relationship that fell apart when the Twin Towers fell.

Pilar (Colombia) presented her paper on traveling post 9/11, observing that for a Colombian, crossing borders is always a tricky business. South African writer Kgebetli’s paper was a satire on America’s role in the world, casting all the nations as toddlers trying to get along in the playground, with only America trying to keep the peace.

Then it was my turn to present: I wasn’t sure how I was going to read 3,000 words and keep the audience interested. I was worried that they would fall asleep, get bored, start shifting around in their seats, or worst of all, start tapping on their cell phones. I’m not afraid of public speaking, for all that I can be very shy in my regular life. Something happens when I’m up at a podium — I feel strong, centred, and connected to the people I’m speaking to. It’s a good feeling.

It was a powerful moment in a series of powerful moments, to fix my eyes on my audiences’ and tell them straight from my heart what I had witnessed and lived through as a Pakistani, seeing our children suffer these last ten years.

I’ve been hearing about how the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is “anti-sentiment”, whatever that means. My piece was completely devoid of sentimentality, the way journalism has to be, and yet in talking about something so painful, the suffering of children, the audience was bound to react in an emotional way, as Hugh Ferrer, the associate director of our programme, observed to me after the talk. Afterwards I felt drained and tired, and out of sorts all day.

September 11, 2011

I was concerned about this entire week, wondering what it would feel like for me as a Pakistani Muslim to be in the United States, especially today. I had done two readings this week on the subject, with a very Pakistani and Muslim focus, and told Kyle Munson of the Des Moines Register that what happened on 9/11 was America’s tragedy, but what happened after that was the world’s tragedy.

I’m also noticing, via Twitter, my fellow Pakistanis commenting that thirty thousand Pakistanis have died compared to three thousand Americans in this ‘war on terror’. That Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan have suffered more as a result of American policy in this decade than any other time in history.

At the same time, I find it impossible to ignore the pain of Americans. These good people lost their loved ones in a tragic, horrific way. Their pain is universal. To cut ourselves off or to build a wall in our hearts to keep their pain away from us is a mistake. It makes us less human. And it makes us more human when we acknowledge that what happened on 9/11 was a blow to the families of three thousand people. Yes, there have been greater natural disasters. Yes, America killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan with the atomic bombs. Yes, people have died of starvation and war for millennia. At the same time, watching a woman cry as she reads the name of her child or husband at the podium today should not leave you unmoved. Showing your toughness, being blasé about this pain because you do not like American foreign policies, refusing to admit that 9/11 changed the world forever in a terrible, innocence-robbing way is not an appropriate response for today. Not for me.

I wasn’t “there” on 9/11, but I feel for those who were.

It’s been a while... October 5, 2011

…since I had the time to write something about what’s going on here in Iowa City. I’ve been going to lots of readings, lectures, panel discussions. I gave a lecture to a class of political science students on Pakistan and its political system. I’ve been eating lots of interesting meals. I squeezed in a trip to San Francisco, where we walked down Lombard Street and saw dolphins in the bay. I visited 826 Valencia, a writing centre set up by novelist Dave Eggers for kids from low-income households in the Mission district; I visited Chronicle Books, a publishing house which also produces the world-famous Moleskine notebooks (I own seven of them!); I and my fellow writers held a small reading at the Adobe Bookstore where there were more writers than audience members, but we still managed to have a lot of fun.

I am working on “Peter Pochmann Goes to Pakistan” and with any luck, I’ll have finished at least half of the manuscript’s first draft. It takes a long time to get a book done — at least a year for a decent draft, with many other revisions after that — so the time afforded me in Iowa City to write without distractions, and to be in the Midwest where the main character comes from, has been invaluable.

Being here has been like a ten-week immersion course in literature and I’m trying to soak up every minute of it. It will be hard to go back home and to my normal life. I’ll miss everyone and everything here so much.

Tonight I spent a little time in the Ped Mall, the downtown area of Iowa City. I’d had a lovely Indian vegetarian dinner with Nell from Ireland — pakoras, mulligatawny soup and aloo paratha — and I was walking back slowly to my residence. But then I sat on another bench, next to one of the pianos that had been placed in the downtown area by the Arts Department for anyone to play.

I watched the yellow leaves drop down from the trees in front of the public library while someone played a beautiful, Debussy-inspired version of “Autumn Leaves”. Girls walked by in sparkling, shimmery dresses, laughing and shouting, while sedate older couples sat outside the Bread Garden Market, sipping red and white wine from long-stemmed wineglasses.

I sat there and drank it all in.

November 9, 2011 Goodbye, Iowa City

My heart is breaking. All of us have been in a state of depression for the last two weeks, knowing that our time here is coming to an end.

The IWP staff tells us that after writers leave, Shambaugh House turns into a haunted place. Everyone working here becomes sad as well. The weather mirrors this feeling, turning horribly cold. The leaves fall off the trees, leaving them bare and naked against the grey, snowy landscape. It’s too quiet, they tell us.

Our last surprise was the visit of Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate for Literature; he came to accept an award from the University of Iowa and spent a private hour with the IWP writers answering questions. I live-tweeted the event — I’ve been tweeting and Facebooking and blogging my experiences in real time all throughout the residency, to the endless amusement of my colleagues and the IWP staff. But recording things as they happen in digital format is the new journalism and also a great way for me to keep track of everything that I’ve been experiencing on this trip.

The last panels and readings have been bittersweet, each party and get-together and walk by the river even more so, as we try to hold on to these precious moments. But they just slip through our fingers, like water.

The last public library panel is an open session for everyone to talk about their experiences in America, how they found the IWP, and what they thought of Iowa. Everyone who speaks has glowing words to say about their time here. Iowans are probably the most friendly, generous, and welcoming people in all of America. We’ve been refreshed and rejuvenated by experience, given the support and respect we need as writers to understand how important our jobs are, how important writing and books and literature and art are to the world.

I present the IWP director Christopher Merrill an ajrak from Sindh to thank him and all of the IWP for their hospitality and the honour they gave me by including me in the programme. I am already thinking of ways I can take my new knowledge and expertise back to Pakistan, to pass it on to my own community of writers, teachers and students.

Thank you, Iowa, and thank you, IWP.

Bina Shah is the author of five books, including Slum Child