Fazlur Rahman is the author of the new memoir The Temple Road: A Doctor's Journey. He also has written the book Our Connected Lives. A longtime oncologist, he is an adjunct professor of biology at Angelo State University. He lives in West Texas.
Q: What inspired you to write The Temple Road?
A: I was born and raised in a Mullah family—an old-line Muslim clan—in a remote village in what is now Bangladesh, with its hardships and heartaches, its myths and superstitions. The people, places, and cultures that I was a part of have almost entirely disappeared.
At the age of 7, I lost my mother, the heart of my family. But even at my tender age, before she died, she imprinted on my impressionable mind her wish for me: “Someday you will be a doctor, Fazlur, and help people.” She had seen enough suffering and death in her short life without having access to any doctors.
As my ill luck would have it, to compound my anguish, soon after she was gone, a parasitic illness called kala-azar almost extinguished my own life.
Looking back at my tenuous beginning and where I am today, I felt compelled to preserve my past and my mother’s memory, and that’s how The Temple Road: A Doctor’s Journey came to be.
I also hoped that this engaging story of love, joy, suffering, and achievement would inspire others.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: My “Temple Road” is both literal and metaphorical.
It’s a real path that passed by the then-isolated Hare Krishna Temple, surrounded by jungles, infested with dangerous sharp-tusked wild boars and cobras and the rest.
I took this fear-ridden path every day from my village to my school in the town of Benapole. If I didn’t begin my journey on this road, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Then, I had to travel several metaphorical Temple Roads: from my village to Dhaka, the megalopolis, for my medical education; from Dhaka to New York to begin my American life 57 years ago; from Houston to far West Texas, in San Angelo, where I practiced cancer medicine for 35 years, and so on. Each of us has our own Temple Road to travel.
Q: The author Tarfia Faizullah said of the book, “To see the world through Rahman’s eyes is to remember that the earliest maps we make are sometimes the truest.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: Tarfia is an accomplished Bangladeshi American poet, with two well-recognized poetry collections. One, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018), tells of the untold brutality to Bangladeshi women by the soldiers during the pitiless civil war with Pakistan in 1971, when Bangladesh was born out of East Pakistan. Despite all this, these women prevailed in the end as true heroines.
Tarfia grew up in West Texas, so she has knowledge about the peoples, places, cultures, and sights and sounds of both Bangladesh and of West Texas. Hence, her comment touches me because of its truth.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this memoir, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Recalling the painful past and putting it on paper was hard. But then that was mitigated by the joys and humor that also came into my life by writing. Putting it all together was gratifying, though at times inscribing the words the way I wanted, the way they were in my head, wasn’t easy either.
On occasions, this also led me to thinking where I have been or how I have spent my days, as in Annie Dillard’s dictum: “How we spend our days, is of course, is how we spend our lives.” I can’t say that I have faithfully followed the dictum.
As mentioned above, my “Temple Road” is both literal and metaphorical, and each of us has our own Temple Road to travel. With humility, I pray that my book will also shed a little light on readers’ paths.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A novel entitled A Family Shame. The story takes place in Dallas and Dhaka, Bangladesh. An exceptional autistic boy's highly educated, elite-society Bengali parents in Dallas can't accept their son's limitations and hide him from society and most of their family. The book traces the story of their lives and turmoil as the boy, Shuja, grows up and becomes a young man.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Please look at my website, fazlurrahmanmd.com, to learn more about myself and my wife, Jahanara (Ara), who has been an anchor in my life.
My website also has the picture of my Bangladesh village in which I was born and grew up and features my other books, as well as my articles, essays, columns, and stories on medical, ethical, and bedside issues on patient care.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment