 Everybody's getting quiet, so I guess I have to start. Okay. It's on the mic. It's on the mic, that's what I'm told. Yeah, okay. So, first of all I want to welcome everybody here. I really, this is amazing. I really appreciate that you came. My one worry was that nobody would show up. So, that didn't happen. No. Yeah, you're here. And I want to thank Deb Rice and the Heyburners, the band for coming over the bells. And some of my friends from Middlebury also have come over. And a lot of my old friends from Montilier, who I'm so happy to see again, and some people that I'm just glad you're here. So, I would like to tell the story behind this book. And I wrote out what I wanted to say. So, I wouldn't go off on any tangents. Not that I ever go off on any tangents. Right? Never. So, working on books. One thing I've learned is that a project takes as long as it takes. Some books don't take much time. Some books take a lot of time. This one took 38 years. So, the story behind the story. You know, I'm putting the glasses on. So, in 1974, after finishing college and painting houses for six months, I set off on what was then known as the Overland trip. With my younger brother and an old friend, I traveled from England and were up through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan into Pakistan and India. When we wound our way down from the high central Asian terrain of Afghanistan through the badlands in the Khyber Pass, we crossed the Pakistan border and came into the Peshawar Valley. I was really struck by the sudden green difference of that valley. The Peshawar is the gateway into southern Asia, into Pakistan and India, and it's one of the world's oldest cities. And for many centuries, it was a crossroads of trade, empire, religions, and peoples. Half a year later, when my money ran out, I went back home and got into newspaper work. But I always wanted to go back east and write about it. So, at the end of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1981, and this is when the story of the story begins, I had a job, editing a weekly paper, and I carried a portable Alamedi typewriter exactly like this one. This, I was really excited about because it has a metal plate on the bottom so I could sit on a hotel bed and write. So this was the laptop, this was my first laptop. And I know, and I loved this thing. Up the long transition zone between central and southern Asia, I flew into the Persian Gulf. And all of British steamship from Dubai to Karachi, bottom of Pakistan, took trains back to Peshawar, and sometime later took buses and trucks across the border and then further up into Muslim Kashmir and Buddhist Ladakh. During the hostage crisis, the students in Tehran had called the U.S. The Great Satan, and I had the idea that the Muslim world was going to become our new global apricity. We hardly knew anything about it, nor them about us. So, notebook after notebook, I wrote down every conversation. I kept maps and news clippings and carbon copies of all the letters I typed. Among the Muslim places where I spent time, the most open and engaging by far was Peshawar, where I hung out with a bunch of young guys in a little ancient neighborhood in the old city called Karipura Bazaar. I even read with my friends to a wedding. And my whole town at time in Peshawar, Muslim culture, is very conservative. I never spoke to a female. Not even at the wedding. But the guys were great, and I learned a lot about them and their lives. I also learned a lot more about a little-known story that really fascinated me. At the beginning of the common era, the Peshawar Valley was home to a civilization called Gandara. Gandara was wealthy from trade along the silk route that Alexander the Great and his soldiers had opened up. It was at the eastern end of Alexander's town of conquest, and for about 300 years after, Greek culture had a big presence there. In the first century AD, Greek art blended with Indian religion in this valley to create what became the first global symbol of the inner search for truth. That's the image of the Buddha, which was created in this place and spread around the world from the Peshawar Valley. I was amazed that this story isn't better known, and I wanted to find a way to tell it. After two years in Asia, I came home and sent about writing my book as a non-fiction journey story. I called it The Heart of the Bazaar, B-A-Z-A-A-R. And I worked on it for 10 years. This is it. This was the original non-fiction book. It was rejected 75 times. That's true. That's true. It's important to hydrate these things. Thank you. There were a lot of reasons why. I was trying to do an awful lot as a young writer, and an adventure in the Muslim world wasn't seen to have a lot of sales potential at that time. Finally, after two successive good agents had given up, I did too. I was living here in my period covering Vermont from the Boston Globe. I had a broken-up marriage and a young child to support, and I was building a freelance writing business, which I have had now for 30 years. And I started writing fiction for young readers. I did eight books for the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Anybody remember that? Thank you very much. And three realistic novels for Ferris Dawson to rule in New York. One of those was The Revealers, which really did go somewhere. I never forgot my Muslim-Asian adventure. In the attic, I had a bankers box full of those old notebooks, maps, news clippings, and karmic copies of what was home. After 9-11, I realized that the best part of my book, the whole second half in Peshawar, was set in the time and place where the extremist movement that would grow into al-Qaeda and then ISIS was first coming together as part of the rebellion against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan next door. I thought, wait a minute, I might have something here. So I rewrote my not-fiction book, reframed it and focused it on Peshawar, but my agent Gale said, I don't know, it's kind of old. Why don't you turn it into a young adult novel? She says, you're good at those. I thought that was a terrible idea. This is a pretty adult subject. But Gale's idea kind of percolated. I started thinking, what if questions, as I often do? What if there was an American teenager whose history professor, Dan, is trying to finish a book saying with a Pakistani colleague that would tell the story of Qandara to the world. What if his dad drags the boy, say his name is Luke, took a shower over the Christmas breaks so his son can understand. What if Luke is really pissed off about this? So instead of learning about the history, he gets sucked into the dangerous extremism that is starting to build in the bizzars of the old city. This is Christmas week 1984. What if Luke makes friends with a young Afghan refugee who has seen what violent extremism can do in his country? And what if Luke develops a really strong connection to the teenage daughter of his father's co-author and she to him, but in the Pashtun culture of Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan, even being seen together would put her, not him, in very grave danger. I did a whole lot of research about women in Islam, about the shower, most of them in London, the growth of al-Qaeda, about the music of Pakistan's Sufi shrines and how it would soon blend with rock and roll. By luck, I got a contract in 2007 to spend a month back in Afghanistan traveling around the country interviewing people and writing about a short-lived American effort to support the country's struggling new democracy. That helped a lot. I did a whole lot of new interviews, whole lot of observations, cultures basically the same. And after that, I wrote a novel called Street of Storytellers. And that is actually the name Street of Storytellers of Peshawar's Central Bazaar. The book was rejected. After a couple years, I wrote a better version. It was rejected. I kept working and working on it and it'll be advice of two Vermont teacher friends. I cut the novel drastically, plopped Luke and his dad, writing Peshawar on page one, and now the thing clicked. I knew I had something. I had finally found this story I've been searching for all these years. Gail sent it out and most of the big houses didn't even bother to reject it. Nothing. My agent was finally ready to give up for real. But then I found Rootstock Publishing. Right here in Montpelier. Rootstock is different. It's a high quality and selected publishing house, but it's a hybrid. A new model where the publisher is professional, but the author supports the cost of production. Thinking about this, I realized first I could have a whole lot more leverage in making this book as good as it could be than I had ever had before in 15 previous books with traditional houses. I also realized this book could be a community production. Then I could collaborate on putting it together with several people all here in Montpelier with whom I have long term positive relationships and who are all I knew world class practitioners of the book making arts. My friend Depp Dwyer, who's here tonight who is one of the most sought after fiction editors working today, generously agreed to edit Steven Storytellers. To Lukem, the graphic designer and political cartoonist who came to Vermont from Forbes magazine and within my shared office for years here in town created the maps and gave them the old time storybook feel that I was looking for. Deb can't be here tonight because he's at a family wedding, but he did a great job. Mason Singer of Laughing Bear Associates who is here tonight designed the best looking book and cover I have ever had hands down. And finally, I could work with Steven McArthur who is the Rootstock publisher and who I've known for many years and who I knew to be a very creative and successful marketer and producer of music recordings through his multi-cultural media. So we had a team and now we have a book. I want to read a bit from Steven Storytellers, but first I want to say that the rest of this story is really up to you. Rootstock is a small community-based publisher and this book which came out last week is up against competition from the big traditional houses which are almost all part of multinational corporations with enormous resources. One way this can build an audience is if people who read it and like it tell other people they do. So thank you for being here and welcome to my story. I thought about what to read and I've read them in the beginning, the first chapter of the book before, but I decided to put this deep into the novel. This is a part of the chapter that is kind of an interlude off the main flow of the story, except that as it turns out it's not. Everything that happens here is going to turn out to be very important in the story. But all you really need to know is that Luke, the American teenager, is the narrator. Yusuf is his friend, an Afghan refugee about Luke's age who was a waiter in his hotel. They have bonded and become good friends over a shared love for the music of Bob Marley. Luke is a huge rock and roll fan. He's not a musician, but he knows a lot about music and he loves music. He's brought a walkman and a small case with his favorite cassettes to the shower and he has discovered local music on a visit with Yusuf to music night at a Sufi shrine. Sufi shrines in Pakistan are traditional centers of tolerance where they often celebrate poetry and music. And since the time of this story they've been violently targeted and often bound by religious extremists. At the shrine where he saw instruments he'd never seen or heard before Luke was very drawn to the traditional two-ended hand drum called the Dolak. He has borrowed a Dolak and he's had one less anodic with a drummer named Waseel that he met at the shrine. Waseel has invited Luke to come meet local musicians at the shower's music street called Dabgari Bazaar. But Luke has been warned not to leave his hotel. The first group of young jihadis that has gathered around Osama bin Laden in the shower feels that Luke has betrayed them and they are not happy with him. Yusuf and Luke don't know what if anything they're planning to do. So I'm going to start partway into this chapter which is called Butterfly. That dinner Yusuf got alarmed when I told him Waseel had invited me to come tonight to the music street and to bring my cassettes. As the professors talked about their project Yusuf stood behind them frowning and shaking his head at me. He backed up into the shadows by the kitchen door and waved at me to come over. I went. That boy warned you not to leave the hotel Yusuf whispered. You told me this. But I got invited to hang out with musicians, man. Think about it. It's dark out. We take a rickshaw. The traffic swallows us up. No worries. Anyway, why should I care when Rashi said him and his friends are losers? Maybe? Maybe not. But we must be smart. Okay, sure. Smart. You got any ideas how? He was thinking. Then he said, maybe I do. That's why when we left my room a little later with my dad's typewriter clacking next door, Yusuf was wearing jeans and a t-shirt like he did sometimes when he was off work. But I had on his rolled edges cap his brown vest and a long-tailed tan pair of his shellmark coming his pajamas. I feel ridiculous, as I said as we came down the stairs and looked like a posh tune. This is ridiculous. It's not that. It just isn't me. Those guys will laugh at me. No. You are showing respect. You like our music. You appreciate our culture. Yeah, but his face will set. If we go to Dabgari Bazaar, we go like this. Or we don't go. We're going. I have my cassettes, Walkman, and drums in my backpack. I got invited. You may as well look like a posh tune in Yusuf's set in the truck. You were just as stubborn. When we got to the music bazaar, Yusuf stayed downstairs looking up and down the street as Wasi brought me up some narrow stairs to the second floor room. It was lit by a single yellowish bulb. One wall had newspaper pages stuck up in it like super cheap wallpaper. Another had two beat-up dolocks hanging from the wall from nails. Four or five guys who'd been sitting on the floor all stood up and Wasi introduced me all around. Everyone was smiling and nodding as we shook hands. One guy had that violin-like instrument, which Wasi said was a rababa. Up close, it had tuning keys along the side and at the end of the neck, the guy plucked it like a guitar, but the body had a tight-stretched skin that gave it the deep banjo sound. Someone else had that box accordion, which they said was a harmonium. Now, the man with the thing like a clarinet ducked into the room. I asked him, what is that? It was a clarinet! Oh, right. I have said you wished to me to learn the dolock, Wasi said. They'd want to make music with you, but all I can do is make a thup. When this was translated, everyone laughed and discussed this, much discussion with gestures at me, smiling, waving at my clothes, discussing. What are they saying? That you were in America and you appreciate our culture. They think this is very good, Wasi said, and it's okay, you don't have to play the drum. He reached behind and brought out a tambourine. It was a regular tambourine with a skin, a wooden hoop, how about this? Oh, well, don't worry, I'll help you. Just strike it here against the bottom of your head when I show you. Okay? Okay. The guys agree. Tambourine is good. Very good. Much encouragement. So the harmonium guy got a drone going, one long wheezy note. Then the rub-out guy picked out something slow and sharp. He played that and played it going faster as Wasi came in with the dolock. The harmonium wheezing up and down like we were floating on it. The drum and the rub-out synced up and that was nice. Doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka, doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka. Wasi was looking at me and nodding on what? As I listened, I could hear with the first beat on his drum. Doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka, doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka. I tried to hit that first beat on my tambourine but missed it. He kept nodding on that beat and then I had it. I had it. Then lost it but he nodded. Still nodded and the music was good. I can't say I understood it. The guys kind of repeated the same bit of a tune over and over but they also changed it, jammed on it. The clarinet is there too and the rhythm was right there. When I'd lose it, I'd look at Wasi and he'd hit him nodding at it right on the spot. Doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka, doom-ba-ka-ta, pa-ka-pa-ka. And I was part of it. As they swelled and repeated and jammed, I kept that one simple beat. Then it was like I stopped thinking. My sound was just part of it. A player smiled at me as we played and I was part of it. It was music and we were making it. This was an incredible few minutes of my life. We were in that yellow room halfway around the world with newspaper on the wall and the rhythm inside different music and we were ringing the music off everything, ringing it together. It was great. When it was over, I don't know how long we played, I kind of lost track but when it finally ended, everyone was happy. They clapped me on the back, shook my hand. You have played well with us, he said. Thanks, man. You kept me in there. Only a little. You found the beat. With all drumming, you must keep that first beat. If you know where that is, you can't get lost. This is a good lesson for you, okay? He stuck out his hand. We shook. Now, he said, I have told these guys about your music. He said something in Pashto and one of the guys who'd been squeezed against the wall listening brought out a cassette player. The cheap kind shaped like a flat shoe box. He said it in front of Wasi. Okay, I said, and fished the red case out of the backpack. Much discussion of this and even more as I zipped it open and the guy saw the 12 cassettes. Much discussion. Fingers pointing. Excitement. What should I play? It is your choice, Wasi. He said, any music we'd like to hear. I've been thinking about this. I considered Bruce born in the USA but then I thought, you know what to play. You know. So I slipped in Bob's and had him dreaded. I'd set it up earlier. Side one song, too. No woman, no cry. They swayed as they listened and Wasi was pocketing along. See, he said to me, down be up be, down be up be. I heard it and then the clarinet was improvising along. Very pretty. Everyone listening closely. And when the song was done and I'd switched it off, they started playing. Not exactly the same, but Wasi had the reggae feel already of the rhythm. Then the harmonium did its groaning and the robot guy was pretty closely picking out the melody. They were messing with it, changing it, making it more like something of theirs. The jam didn't last long, but it was very cool. Play another. So I started born in the USA. This didn't catch on so well. I wanted them to love it, but the big rock sound didn't come through the little speaker. When Bruce sang born in the USA, they understood that and they liked it. Really, they pointed to me. USA! But when Bruce got to the part, I hadn't thought about this. When he was sent to kill the yellow man, Wasi got puzzled. Look. The song didn't sound right anyway. No bass at all. I switched it off. Okay. He said, very nice. It's usually played really loud. It doesn't sound right on this. Yes. The clarinet guy clapped me on the back. He said, USA! It was still early evening when the rickshaw brought me and Yusuf to Carintura Bazaar. Nasim's shop was open. I was so amped up about the music, no way that I want to go right home. Yusuf wasn't thrilled, but he was okay with us coming here. I think he felt safer with his friends. The tea making place was open. So were more shops. Each one a narrow-lighted opening in the nighttime murk. No street lights in this old, old neighborhood. Hello, my friends! Nasim said as he called for tea. As word got around that we were there, some other guys came. I never knew how word flashed around the presowers so fast. I'm going to skip a little part where one of the boys tells his story of trying four different times and failing each time to sneak into Germany for work. A Pakistani passport has no value, he said. US, British, German? If we can get these, they have values, but ours has none. I didn't know that. It is true. In the lane a beggar trudged up. He had no chin, couldn't close his mouth. Yusuf gave him a coin and he trudged on. As we sat quiet and thoughtful now, I watched the man who sold vegetables across the lane. He sat cross-legged on a ledge, a foot or so above the street. He had a military buzz cut and wore an old soldier's sweater. He had just shaped up his little manger of leafy greens, celery and radishes when a motor scooter platted by and gave him a shot of black exhaust right in the face. The guy grimaced and waved the smoke away from his stuff, which I figured he needed to sell to feed his family. For a second, I wondered how it was to be that guy. The boys in the shop were laughing about another story. When they settled down, they said, Yusuf, how big is your family? The other boys fell quiet. My family? Well, yeah. You said your dad works at the hotel, right? Yes, he cooks. And your mom? Is she around? No. He said no more. Do you have brothers? Sisters? I have a sister, Yusuf said. He wasn't looking at me. Nobody was looking at me. Or at him. Oh. I didn't know how to ask more. Or if I should. Ben Nasim said, tell him. Yusuf didn't respond. He was your friend, Nasim said. You should tell him. Yusuf gazed at me thoughtfully for a time. Then he said, my family lived in Kabul. My sister was little, only five. After the Russians came, there was a lot of trouble. Many men, thousands of men, were taken to prison. Most never came out. My father had worked for an American family, diplomats as a cook. So when the communists took over and the family left, you got word that he was in danger of being arrested. We just left. In the middle of the night, we took three suitcases for my father and my mother and me to carry. A friend of my father's who had a taxi drove us outside Kabul. We walked all the rest of that night and all the rest on the next day and the next and the next. We walked for more than a week. What did you eat? Where did you sleep? Well, we couldn't. Where we couldn't. To Afghans and travelers and guests, same as here. Sometimes it was dangerous for people to help us, but every time someone could, they did. We only had to sleep outdoors for two nights. The second night that we had to do that, we were too tired. We slept by the road and in the morning we were hungry. We wanted to make a small fire so we could make tea, cook a little bread. We were looking along the roadside for sticks, dried grass, anything to burn. There was a farm field. It was abandoned because of the fighting. So it was full of sticks, you know, old crops. My sister, she didn't know not to walk into a field. Why not walk into a field? Mines. The Russians have put thousands of mines in the fields, in the villages, every place they cannot control. You have to stay right on the road. Couldn't there be mines in the road? He shrugged. The Russians used the roads too. So mostly they mined the places where only Afghans go. Fields, villages, hillsides. There was a kind of mine called a butterfly. They dropped from helicopters and they have little wings so they float down spinning, you sort of said. They are green and small made of plastic. The plastic is soft and if you squeeze it, the mine explodes. A lot of kids see them and think they have something to play with. When my mother looked around for my sister, she saw she was in a field and was bending to pick up something. My mother screamed but my sister didn't know what was wrong. My mother ran. She got there and reached toward it just as my sister started to play with the thing. The guys in the shop said nothing. I finally said, what happened? Yusuf's mouth was tight. My mother covered most of my sister with her body but my sister's hands were torn to pieces. A cold shudder went through me. What about your mom? It was a small mine but she was cut up terribly by the the metal, the bits. Shrapnel, I said. Pieces of the mine. Shrapnel, yes. Yusuf sat again slowly. Shrapnel. What happened then? He shrugged. It was wartime in the countryside. No hospitals, no doctors. We cleaned their wounds the best we could. We tore up clothing from our suitcases and made bandages. Then my father and I put them on our backs. We left everything behind. My father carried my mother, I carried my sister. It was very hard. They were in too much pain. Their bandages were soaked in blood then so were we. We were sure they would die. A freight truck stopped for us. They gave us water and my father gave the money. We rode to the border through the pass in the back underneath the sacks of grain. It was very dirty. My mother's wounds got infected. We got them to the shower and the hospital there. They took my sister's hands. They took her hands? Yes, cut off. Yusuf drew the blade of one hand across his other wrist. They said otherwise she would die. Well, what about your mom? The infection was too bad. In the hospital she died. Well, God Yusuf, how's your sister? What can she do? She cannot do. She only sits. My father does the cooking, the cleaning, everything. I help her. I work, bring home a little money, do some cleaning, wash the dishes. We feed my sister. Most men will never do these things. My sister, she sits. She is broken. I think she will never fix. Can't she get like artificial hands or something? He shrugged. Real refugees. I shivered. No clue what to say. Yusuf looked down into his teeth. Then back up. Maybe I don't see these things the same as all Pashtun men, he said. Some say what my father and I do at home is women's work, that we should never do it. But if we don't, who does? We can't afford to pay someone, so who? Women are for cooking the meat, not to meat. Said a man in the street who stopped at the counter to listen. Naseem said something sharp to him. The man shrugged, moved on. Quiet. We were quiet. Do you think it's wrong the way women are treated here, I asked? I was a little scared the guys might get angry. But they didn't. They waited for Yusuf to answer and listened when he did. I do think this is something that must change. He said, when I clean the dishes after I finish, I look at my hands. They don't become women's hands. They are just hands. Again, I looked at the others. They were quiet. Naseem nodded. That was all. I'm sorry, I said. Okay. They were all thoughtful. After a bit, Imtiaz spoke. You know the word for mother always has M, he said. Huh? I like to study language, he said. In our languages, all the words for mother have M. In Pashto, we say more. In Urdu, the main Pakistani language, they say Amir. In Hindi, the biggest language in India, they say Magi. In Punjabi, it's Mai. In Farsi, the language of India, they say Maadar. In German, they say Mutter, I said. In French, it isn't there, said Naseem. How do you know this, Imtiaz asked? I know this, Naseem said. I would like to go to France. See, Imtiaz said they all have M. I guess they do, I said. It is not the same with father. No? No. It is not the same. The guys felt quiet again. I found myself watching the tea shop boys, as they ran in and out of the place across the lane, bringing cups and trays all around the bazaar. That never changes much, does it, the tea shop? No, said Naseem. Next to it, see the bakery? That's where they make the naan. What's a naan? It is our bread, our bread, flat bread. Everyone eats it, just watch. So I did. The bakery was a wood platform in which the baker sat cross-legged. The oven below him had a brick front, and when they opened its metal door at street level to stoke the fire, I could see bright orange flames in there. The baker seemed like a cheerful character. His two young sons mixed and moistened the dough, shaped it into lumps and worked those into flat bubbles. With a long-handled wood paddle, the father picked up each oval and dipped it downward through an opening in his platform, patting it on the oven's inner wall. Then he'd stick a long metal pick with a hooked end into the oven and pull up a new baked naan spinning on the hook. Another son would wrap the steaming flat bread in newspaper and put it out for sale. Every naan went out hot. Naseem called across the lane and the boy brought one. Naseem unwrapped the brown-edged bread and held it out with his fingers. Just tear off some, he said. It was beautiful to eat the naan, crusty outside and inside, moist and delicious, soft and warm. As we passed it and shared it around, I felt pretty sure it had been just this way, that people had been eating this bread just this way since the time of Gandhara, the time of Jesus Christ, the time when Karyan Purimazar was young. I don't know if you know what I'm saying here, but what we thought we'd do, first I want to say are there any questions or anything that anybody would like to comment or anything that I could respond to? Yes, Mr. Baginski. Oh, wait, I got to say something I forgot to say. I would like to wish happy birthday to Judy Peacock who is 60 years old today, who has come all the way from Denver, Colorado, just for this event. And her sister, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. You're going to be therapy now. I'm very happy to meet her. I'm sorry, Mike, but go ahead. Sir, your book, The Revealers, was something I used in my class in many schools around the country. How do you see this as being useful to teachers in middle school, young people in high school? There's a story here to tell. How do you see that working out? I don't know that teachers will want to use it, but we did put together a curriculum resource guide with your help. You helped me as a recently retired teacher. You knew what teachers might want to use if they worked with this book. And I will say that if you don't know this, I have a young adult novel called The Revealers that has been used by middle schools, mostly middle schools, all over the country. Like, I've estimated over 1,000 middle schools who have worked with this book. And so in the course of visiting a lot of these schools, I had a chance to talk with a lot of teachers. And especially I've learned at the seventh, eighth, even ninth grade levels, there are an awful lot of courses on world cultures. There are courses on comparative religions. And there are courses on contemporary issues. So this is a story that, from a personal point of view, goes into the rise of extremism in a culture and how that affects families and communities. It deals with two major religions, Islam and Buddhism. It deals with the particular rise of radical, violent terrorism in the world. And I think those are issues that a lot of people want to learn more about and find a way to have their kids have a window into that's personal and engaging. So this is a story told by an American kid who, by the way, does not want to be there. He's mad that his dad has dragged him over to the shower. And it's because he's angry about it that he decides he's going to have nothing to do with his father's historical work. And instead, he gets involved with these guys in the city and gets drawn into this extremist movement that's just beginning to gather. So I hope it'll be useful to the teachers. It's a bit more of a risk in that way than the reveal which deals with bullying. So it's sort of a natural connection with a lot of schools. But I've had a lot of teachers tell me, oh my gosh, we need a story like this where the story opens up some of these issues. There's so much in the news today. Hi, Sally. Thanks for coming. So many people I'm glad to see here that I haven't seen for a long time. Did you have a question, Barbara? I do. I was wondering, when you wrote the adult version, whose point of view did you tell that story was and what was the main difference that you incorporated to make it into young adult? Well, my original book, the nonfiction book, was my point of view. It was a personal journey story. My idea was I'm as an American, a naive young American reporter, I'm going to stick myself into the Muslim world and I'm just going to write down everything. And I tried to learn a little bit before I left, but I was pretty much a naive young American reporter with a typewriter and notebooks. So that was my idea, was to write a sort of a nonfiction journey story, you know, a journey of discovery. And so I had my own, all this material and there's some stuff in the Street of Storytellers that's lifted exactly from what really happened to me. For example, the conversation about the words for mother happened word for word in that shop in the night time among these guys in the shower that all the words for mother began with him. I didn't make that up. So there's a fair number of things in this book that were lifted or adapted from what I experienced or heard in the conversation I had or the sights that I saw in the shower. But the idea of it making it into a novel from a young American voice perspective, I mean it's a very different story, you know, but that was, you know, there are a number of things in the novel. There's one thing where Luke is walking down the street, he's trying to follow Yusuf who's taking him somewhere and he's trying to keep Yusuf's head in sight. Bazaar is very crowded with men, all men. And everybody, a lot of people want to meet him and talk to him and it's happened to me. And as he walks by a guy squatting by the street frying fish and a big sort of an iron wok. The guy says, hello, what is your country? And he says, America. And the guy says, ah, he says, first God is God, second God is America. And that happened to me exactly. I mean, I would write what we had after I had these conversations and that's why you do the book too. Anybody else? Yes, yes, Phil. You must wish from time to time that you could go back to Pakistan and that, would you be able to find any of these? When I had a chance in 2007 to go back to Afghanistan, I had a project I spent a month in the country. Eastern Afghanistan and North West Pakistan are all Pashtun, so it's the same culture. So that was an opportunity to go back and observe and listen to people and take a lot of new notes. Whether I could go back to Peshawar, I've heard different reports. I did meet a young man. I had a client last year, what do you call it? IT company in South Burlington and the CEO of the company had an exchange student. And he said, why do you have an exchange student this year? He's from Pakistan. I said, where in Pakistan? He goes, some city called Peshawar. I said, I need to meet this kid. I need to talk to this kid. And I did. I took him off for a coffee. He's a nice young man. He said, yeah, you can come to Peshawar. It's great. We have a lot of fun. We read about the violence and extremism and so forth. I would go back. I think I would. I would like to try to go back. I would go back. If I got the chance. It would be fun to go back to that same bizarre and see where my friends are. It was a while ago, but I don't think people move around quite as much in that world as they do it here. And they might remember me. You know? I don't stand out now. I might remember me. It's possible. Yeah. Yes, Ian. Can you, today, write a normal clue on the daily mechanics? Like your struggles. You write it for a time of day. We talked about the amount of time to write this book. Were you inspired by global events that keep you back in the groove? Can you sort of talk about that? In terms of writing, I actually, in my business, I earn a living as a freelance writer, so whatever projects I'm working on, I have to work on or I don't get paid. So what I do if I'm working on a book like this is I do it for the first couple hours in the morning when things are fresh and I try to not be distracted and not answer email and so forth. And that's my freshest time and I work on that and I get busy with other stuff. In terms of the inspiration for this, a lot of it was reading this all and literally I started a bankers box filled with all the stuff that I brought back from Asia. The address of chapters, maps, newspaper clippings, and a whole satchel like a little airline good flight bag full of pocket notebooks that I had brought back from Asia. I remember when I got into San Francisco airport, I'd been gone for two years. I'm going for customs and the customs agent, he says, well what's this? I said, well this is a seal and he goes, no it's okay you don't have to open it. I said, no really I have to show somebody. So I demand it to the customs agent that I open the bag so he could see it and he goes, yeah okay, okay go on. So that was a lot of the inspiration I had to read these notebooks again for years and this old material and then when I got to go back to Afghanistan that helped a lot because I was back in that world. Of course Afghanistan in 2007 now there was the remnants of the Soviet the battle fight against the Soviet were everywhere and this was in the midst of the war with the Taliban but I didn't really get into the war zones. But a lot of Afghanistan is fairly peaceful if you're careful so it was inspiring to me to see that go back there. Thank you. Can you tell us just a little bit of the story of our search along with Mason Singer for the right color? Yeah, yeah, well this was interesting. Where are you Mason? There he is, I see him hiding back there. So Mason is a fantastic designer and he really takes a lot of time and we had a whole, you had half your office at one point with festooned with pinned up different mock-ups for this cover and we had all kinds of different ideas and Mason searched out all these different images and we would come and think about them. We had it down to two options if I remember right, this one which the story of this is that, I don't know if you can see this this is the cover, this is a proof of the book so a little bit different finish but there it is. So Mason took a photograph that he had taken as a young man in India of this boy up against a lattice and then he put a different image behind it and it was sort of sunset scene and we liked that, the other image we had was more of a street scene in Pakistan and it was interesting because it showed the motorcycle rickshaw that is a big part of the story and it was intriguing, it was sort of pulled you into it. We liked both of them, we weren't sure so I had a school visit in New Hampshire a small school I'd been to before and I asked this teacher if I could talk to a group of good readers and she said, oh I have my seventh grade and so we did that as part of my day and I brought the two covers and I showed the I showed the cover that had the street scene and they went that's really interesting, I think that's really interesting and then I showed them this and they went oooh and they all said that's that's the cover and this one young woman seventh grader said about the street scene, she said I don't think that was interesting but it wouldn't make me want to open up the book I want to know what was that but it wouldn't make me think I got to go there but she said this one makes me think about the way that I feel because he looks like a kid who's on the outside of the world kind of looking through and she said that's how a lot of my friends and I feel and I thought yeah that's true, that's how you often feel as an adolescent I had written this book for young adults and you kind of felt like real to adults as well which I hope you're right about but I was thinking about my usual YA sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade audience that became our focus group and that was they made the choice really yes, hi Sarah this is my sister well I know you for a while a little while so I remember when you spent two years in India in Nepal and then you came back and worked as an editor and your interest was in going back to Pakistan to study the Indus River Valley as an ancient trade group very first time I went east was after college and then I came back in my 20s and went to Newspaper and I said in the talk briefly I wanted to go back there and I developed this idea I called it the scene between Central and Southern Asia so the Indus River Valley is in Pakistan and it's basically the connecting if the Indian subcontinent at some prehistoric time floated into what's now Central Asia that was the connecting scene yeah so you studied for whatever before you made the money to go back was it hard to let go of when you wrote this book it was very different obviously your focus was different but was it hard to let go of what you had planned for so long well it was hard to let go of the nonfiction book because I worked on it for 10 years and it really was rejected like 75 times and they had two different agents both of whom were very good but who couldn't sell it the book kept getting telescope down the steam ship I took from Dubai to Karachi by time in Pakistan then it went up into Kashmir and India and then up into Ladakh which is a Buddhist Tibet so it was a big long geographic and I kept cutting it down and telescoping it down because it was just too much I was trying to do too much so it was a learning experience but in the end I had to let go of the book because nobody could sell it really did you take it out did you take it out? I wouldn't want to I think this is this is a much better book than that one what happened was if you think about it 20 years of writing fixing for young adults I developed some skills and a better idea of how to tell a story I think one of the problems with the original one was the story itself was not strong of what needed it together was not cohesive enough I tried to do too much I was a young writer and I had this whole big James Mitchell idea it was too much to pull off I should have started small and built out but no I'm going to start big and then keep paring away so our idea was that we would offer the book and if you would like a copy we can sell it to you and if you would like me to sign it I'm happy to sign it and then when we're done with that part then we'll crank up the band and push the seats back and see if we can have a little bit of fun I think we're at that stage what's that history of the do-lock you probably explained it in a book the do-lock is a two-ended ham drum it's kind of cylindrical and it's about this big and it often hangs from a cord you play it at both ends one end is wider than the other and this is higher and so you play it like this it's kind of a cool instrument I have one but I never really got to play it it's a very different type of music but it's a cool sound if you're ever interested one thing that in the process of making this book I didn't tell this part of the story but I knew that music was a big part of the book I knew Luke was a big music fan but I didn't really know how that was going to work and I was stuck and I was looking for advice about the Sufi music shrine culture it was a huge part of life in Pakistan and I found a guy at Harvard named Ali Asani who's a professor of Indo-Muslim studies there and I said can I come talk to you and he said sure so I went and visited him and I told him where I was stuck and what I was trying to do and that music was a big part of the story but I really didn't understand how that was going to work out and he said okay there's a song called Sufi Rock he said in the 90s in Pakistan one particular band of young rock and roll guys, Pakistanis blended traditional Sufi music which basically prays him to saints that are very much part of life in Pakistan with rock and roll and they created a new form of music called Sufi Rock which is enormously popular in the Muslim world and he said you have to go on YouTube and type in Coke Studio Pakistan and Coke Studio is a program that is millions upon millions of viewers in Pakistan and it's now there's a Coke Studio in India, there's a Coke Studio in Nigeria but it started in Pakistan so what it is is sponsored by Coca-Cola it's a live broadcast in a studio of musicians playing a song and they'll play a song that's usually a traditional song but with rock and roll instruments and what they often do is they'll take the traditional male shrine singers kind of little guys with long beards and stuff and a female pop star uncovered, no hijab and usually kind of glamorous they're pop stars and they'll put them together and they'll sing the song that's a duet now this is really radical in Pakistan really radical so I went home and typed Coke Studio and I became totally I used to take my laptop around to my musician friends and say you gotta watch this, you gotta watch this and one of them said our bass player friend Sam a little bit of a cynic says are you turning weird what is this? and I said no you gotta watch this and at the end of the song he goes okay that was good because the music it's a live broadcast of these guys with this unusual twist they're very often pale male together and if you're interested type in Coke Studio Pakistan the ones that are most popular there's a couple of them that have like 20 million views and they're really just amazing so that was a big breakthrough for me and so this story kind of presages the birth of Sufi Rock it's 1984 Sufi Rock came up in the 90s but Luke kind of that scene where the guys start to pick up on American or Jamaican music sort of presages what would happen in Pakistan over the years to come and that's not the end of the music part of the story by the way well what do you think should we move on?