Author Kia Abdullah on her new novel
L.M. Montgomery’s classic helped author Abdullah realize the importance of making her own choices
I wanted readers to keep switching allegiances between the girl and the boys. ... I wanted to create three-dimensional characters all of whom were capable of earning the sympathies of readers.
Take It Back Kia Abdullah HarperCollins
LONDON If you ask Kia Abdullah about the journey that led her to write an explosive new courtroom thriller about four Muslim youths charged with the rape of a 16-yearold classmate, she will at some point start talking about Anne of Green Gables.
For Abdullah, 37, daughter of immigrant Bangladeshi parents, the discovery of L.M. Montgomery’s intrepid red-haired heroine was a seminal childhood moment.
“That novel, Anne of Green Gables — I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it changed the course of my life,” says Abdullah, who grew up in the poor East London area of Tower Hamlets and found release from a strict family environment in her weekly visits to the local library.
“It’s a very deprived area — about 33 per cent immigrant population and the U.K.’s worst for child poverty,” says Abdullah, one of eight children. “The first generation of children has to bootstrap, in a way. The first time I really learned English was when I started school. That’s why libraries and reading are so important. The reason I’m here and am a professional novelist is because my siblings took me to the library every weekend. Every Saturday I would pick up six books.”
That’s how she discovered Anne. “Anne was expected to be a polite young girl who was very well-mannered, yet she could be a tear-away who did what she wanted. That resonated with me because from a very young age, I was tightly scripted: I was to go to school and go to college and then get married and have children. Those were not necessarily things I wanted to do myself — so when I read Anne of Green Gables at a very young age, I realized that you don’t always have to do what people tell you to do.”
All this helps explain the character of Zara Kaleel, the central figure in Abdullah’s acclaimed new novel, Take It Back. She’s a brilliant young London barrister who shatters the expectations of her Muslim family by abandoning a promising career at the bar to work with victims of sexual assault. She takes up the cause of Jodie, who claims four Muslim youths raped her. In so doing, Zara finds herself further estranged from her own Muslim community.
“People have asked how much of Zara’s life is based on mine, and I try to give a clear answer — about 60 per cent,” Abdullah says. “It’s there in her relationships with her family and some of the things she struggles with — follow the Muslim example, be quiet, be docile, learn to fall into line.”
Abdullah remembers what happened in her own life with the onset of puberty.
“I was treated like a delicate flower, who needed to be protected. That changed my perception not only of my community but also of myself. You learn to hide your body, you learn to shroud yourself, you’re meant to be embarrassed — all the wrong things to teach young women.”
Furthermore, like the fictional Zara, the real-life Kia fled an arranged marriage.
“It was 13 years ago when I was 24. It wasn’t forced but it involved persuasion: You have the right to decide, but you have had 15 suitors, your dad is ill and wants you to be happy and secure. All this peripheral persuasion made me agree … but I definitely would say it was not wanted. It lasted only a few days. The family reacted very badly — so much money spent on the wedding, so many people invited.…”
Today, Abdullah lives far from London, with her photographer boyfriend in Yorkshire. A former writer for the Rough Guide travel series, she juggles her fiction with her duties as founding editor of the popular outdoor travel blog Atlas & Boots. Petite and outgoing, with an endless curiosity about the world around her, she has settled contentedly into the countryside with its “better quality of life.”
But London in all its facets remains an indelible part of her experience as she looks back on the turbulence of those earlier years with both affection and sadness. The pain of causing grief to those she loved remains with her, even though time has healed the estrangements of the past.
Take It Back is her third novel, and has some dramatic surprises in store for readers — especially those who may have preconceived notions about the cultures it examines.
Abdullah remains protective of her Muslim heritage even while rebelling against aspects of it. She was driven to write the novel by the increasing media focus on so-called “grooming” cases where older Asian men prey sexually on younger white women. She’s concerned that the notoriety of these incidents has led to blanket judgments about Muslim culture — “that their men are bred to believe that women are there for the taking.”
She bristles at that kind of tabloid mindset. “In my own circumstance, I’ve never experienced anything like that,” she says. “Men I know don’t have these attitudes.”
Yet, her protagonist in the novel is a Muslim welfare worker taking the side of 16-year-old Jodie, who insists four Muslim teens raped her. Readers would be wise to withhold judgment about where the story is going to go. This is a novel about secrets and lies, evasions and assumptions — one that punctures preconceived notions about Britain’s criminal justice system and race. One key devices is to force the reader to take a closer look at the four accused — to present them as individuals, not as a collective cultural monstrosity.
“They all have distinctive personalities, distinctive desires and distinctive family units,” she says. “That they are of the same age and of the same religion doesn’t mean they are all alike. I wanted to present them as individuals who make individual choices and are capable of good or bad actions.”
Furthermore, she says, “I wanted readers to keep switching allegiances between the girl and the boys as the story progressed. I wanted to create three-dimensional characters all of whom were capable of earning the sympathies of readers.
“I think that’s the crux of the novel — that we do good or bad things because we choose to do them as individuals, not because of the colour of our skin, not because of what our faith or gender might be.”
But will that message get through? Recently, during discussion of the book at a literary festival, a young Muslim woman in the audience challenged Abdullah.
“She said she would never read the novel because it was perpetuating another negative narrative about Muslims. … To me, that sort of thing is as dangerous as what the tabloids do, because what I was being told was that I can’t act as an individual and tell the story I want to tell — that I should necessarily be telling a positive story because of my identity.”