Gardens of Water (84 page)
Authors: Alan Drew
Acknowledgments
I
WISH TO THANK THE MANY DIVERSE PEOPLES OF TURKEY,
whose kindness, generosity, and grace always made me feel welcome while I lived as a guest in their country. Thank you to my students and colleagues at Üsküdar American Academy, who taught me much more than I taught them.
Without the support of the teachers, students, and staff at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop this book would never have been attempted much less finished and published. I am particularly indebted to Ethan Canin for his enthusiastic support for my less-than-polished writing, Marilynne Robinson for her wisdom, and Chris Offutt for his humor and advice. A great big belated thank God for everyone from the Workshop and Trinity Episcopal Church, who provided dinners for Mimi and me after the birth of our son. Thanks to Ben Caldwell for the cigs and drinks and good conversation. Connie Brothers provided support to me and my family in numerous ways that not only made our stay in Iowa more pleasant but also helped me to keep writing at a time when this book was in its infancy. Thanks to Jan Zenisek and Deb West for all the enjoyable wasted time hanging out in the Workshop office when I should have been writing.
Rex Honey’s course on the Middle East at the University of Iowa was immensely important in spurring me to begin this book. Thanks to Dr. Honey for allowing me to write fiction for a term paper project.
Murat Ozay graciously provided the translation of the Radiohead lyrics.
Few people were more critical to the creation of this book than my wonderful agent, Dorian Karchmar. Her more than four years of patience, support, insightful criticism, and stubborn determination to make me work when I wanted to stop gave me confidence and hope when I had little.
I’m extremely grateful to Kate Medina at Random House, who showed so much enthusiasm and interest in this book. Publishing for the first time is an overwhelming experience, but Kate managed to make the process enjoyable. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor. Thanks to Gina Centrello, publisher, for strongly backing this debut. A big thanks, also, to everyone at Random House who worked to get this book to as many readers as possible, particularly Tom Perry, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Sally Marvin, and Carol Schneider. And last but in no way least, a very grateful thanks to Robin Rolewicz and Abby Plesser, who made this whole publishing process as easy as possible.
I had essentially given up writing until I met Robert Rosenberg in Istanbul. He had the guts to begin a novel when I was scared to begin a short story, a fact that was both intimidating and inspiring. His kind but forceful encouragement for me to write, his trust in me to read the early drafts of his novel, and our shared mini-workshops over Efes beer on various rooftop terraces stoked my long-extinguished desire to be an author. He is a great friend, a fantastic critic, a wonderful writer, and a constant source of positive encouragement.
Janet Baker volunteered to read the manuscript at a critical time in its genesis and provided important objective critiques.
Cheers to Caren Streb for her incredible friendship, her sublime taste in food and wine, and her endless excitement and joy for life; to Adam Davis, whose talent in all the arts is a constant inspiration to me; and to Craig Rutter, for being one of my oldest and dearest compadres. Thanks to all of the above for helping me keep one foot always in California.
Thanks to my family and my wife’s family for all their encouragement and support in countless ways.
Without my wife, Miriam Drew, I would not have had the confidence to write this book. Her faith in me got me through all the days I thought I was not smart, talented, or tough enough to write anything worth reading, and my love for her makes me want to impress her. And my son, Nathaniel, always reminded me that few things are more important than good macaroni and cheese, big trains, and slow bike rides in the sun.
BOOK SOURCES
Books that were indispensable to me in the production of this novel are as follows:
Atatürk,
by Andrew Mango,
Who Are the Turks?,
by Justin McCarthy and Carolyn McCarthy, and
Turkey Unveiled,
by Nicole and Hugh Pope;
The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland,
by Kevin McKiernan, and
Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History,
by Susan Meiselas;
The Qur’an,
as translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, and
The Qur’an,
as translated by M. H. Shakir;
Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions,
edited by Wendy Doniger,
Biblical Quotations for All Occasions,
by J. Stephen Lang,
The Koran: Selected Suras,
translated by Arthur Jeffrey, and
The Wisdom of the Prophet,
translated by Thomas Cleary;
Understanding Islam,
by Thomas W. Lippman,
Islam and the West,
by Bernard Lewis,
The Middle East,
by Dr. William Spencer,
Warriors of the Prophet,
by Mark Huband, and
Terrorism, Theirs and Ours,
by Eqbal Ahmed.
The New York Times, The Economist, The International Herald Tribune,
and
The Turkish Daily News
kept me up-to-date on happenings within Turkey.
About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California, A
LAN
D
REW
has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He has lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in eastern Montana, where he worked with emotionally disturbed children. He taught English literature for three years at a private Turkish high school in Istanbul, arriving just four days before the devastating 1999 Marmara earthquake. In 2004 he completed a master of fine arts degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He currently lives with his wife and son in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Gardens of Water
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Alan Drew
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from “How to Disappear Completely,” words and music by Thomas Yorke, Philip Selway, Edward O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, and Jonathan Greenwood, copyright © 2000 by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Drew, Alan
Gardens of water: a novel / Alan Drew.
p. cm.
1. Families—Fiction. 2. Muslim families—Fiction. 3. Americans—Turkey—Fiction. 4. Earthquakes—Turkey—Fiction. 5. Turkey—Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.R48G37 2008
813'.6—dc22 2007019959
eISBN: 978-1-58836-680-1
v3.0