Q&A with Timothy Jay Smith

 

 

 

Timothy Jay Smith is the author of the new novel Istanbul Crossing. His other books include Fire on the Island. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Istanbul Crossing, and how did you create your character Ahdaf?

 

A: My partner and I have been going to the same Greek island village at least once a year for the last 20 years. By sheer chance, Molyvos on the island of Lesvos became Ground Zero for the refugee crisis that peaked in 2015-2017. In a 12-month period, an estimated 500,000 refugees landed on the beach behind our village of 1,500 year-round residents.

 

We aided the refugees in many ways and had a lot of personal contact with them, which inspired me to write their story.

 

That was my intention when I started to write my last novel, Fire on the Island, but instead it evolved into a story of how the Greek villagers coped with the humanitarian crisis that had crashed over them like a tsunami.

 

In essence, it also became my homage to Greece, a country I fell in love with when I was 21 years old, and returned to it often, cumulatively spending some seven years of my life there.

 

But I still had my refugee story to write. Once a refugee landed on a Greek beach, I could pretty well predict what his or her steps would be to get to their ultimate destination in Europe.

 

What I didn’t know was how they got to the Turkish coast and onto rafts to cross the narrow but treacherous channel to Greece. I decided to find out, and that’s what led me to Istanbul Crossing, which is my refugee story.

 

How did I find Ahdaf? I went to Istanbul, hired a guy who worked for an NGO helping other Syrian refugees, and asked him to show me the city from the refugees’ perspective.

 

He had been a smuggler himself until he realized his high school French was good enough for him to give guided tours to French tourists. That – and working for the NGO – was what he was doing when I met him. He was enormously compassionate and eventually became the inspiration for my main character in Istanbul Crossing.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I mentioned that I went to Istanbul, but it wasn’t my first time. I’d been there a half dozen times, crossed Turkey twice, and traveled the length of Syria – so I felt I could set a story in those places with reasonable authenticity. Of course, my “research” also included my first-hand experience with the refugees in Greece.

 

What surprised me the most was how openly the people smugglers operated in Istanbul and also Izmir, another coastal town where refugees congregated, waiting to make the crossing to Greece. It was common knowledge in which public squares or cafés refugees could hook up with a smuggler.

 

Nevertheless, it was a situation fraught with danger and uncertainty. There were many stories of smugglers cheating refugees, or worse, endangering them by providing fake lifejackets, vastly overcrowded rafts, or insufficient fuel that left them stranded in the middle of the rough channel.    

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: With my prior four novels, I had opening and closing scenes in mind when I started writing them, which gave me a good sense of the emotional arc of the story I wanted to tell.

 

Of course, stories evolve. I always welcome those “Aha!” moments when, in the course of writing, something is revealed to me that I hadn’t foreseen, perhaps a character trait or plot point that nudges the story in a different direction or simply opens up new possibilities.

 

With Istanbul Crossing, I hadn’t envisioned its start or end. In fact, after my first research trip to Istanbul, I felt I had no idea what my story was going to be. That haunted me for a couple of days. I even avoided my desk.

 

On the third day, when I did finally sit at my desk, suddenly I was flooded with ideas. I knew who my main character was going to be, and what were his internal and external struggles.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: I wrote Istanbul Crossing to give a human face to refugees. Not only those who arrived in Greece, but refugees everywhere who are fleeing wars, persecution or climate change. Unhappily, I think their numbers worldwide are going to increase exponentially.

 

Too often refugees are dehumanized and we lose sight of our shared humanity. That happened in Greece. That’s happening along America’s southern border, and in the foreseeable future will happen internally as our coastal cities become uninhabitable.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have the distinction of being 16th generation American; or as I’ve often described it, my ancestors arrived in the tailwinds of the Mayflower. I grew up with stories of distant relatives who were heroes and others who made sacrifices – all for America and her founding principles.

 

Given how divided Americans are today, and the negativity that’s been unleashed, it begs the question: what’s the real legacy of my ancestors’ sacrifices? I’m working on a new suspenseful novel that, in part, endeavors to answer that question.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: A couple of things.

 

A new edition paperback of my novel Fire on the Island will be published by Leapfrog Press at the end of April.

 

I also have a message for young people who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives. I started my career during the War on Poverty and spent the next decades working on programs to aid the poor. It was incredibly satisfying work.

 

While anti-poverty programs are less robust today, there is definitely a future in refugee aid, which would be equally satisfying with endless job opportunities.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Full disclosure: I judged a competition involving this novel.