Nadia Hashimi – Tender Family Stories

Nadia Hashimi is a bestselling international author whose latest book, Sparks Like Stars, draws on her experience as an Afghan American physician who – like her protagonist in Sparks Like Stars – was on emergency call in New York on 9/11.  Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today Nadia talks about the grief we all understand when mothers lose sons and fathers daughters, of her experience growing up in a culture overtaken by war, and writing stories that speak for those whose voices go unheard. And in our Armchair Traveler Giveaway We’ve got three E book copies of Nadia’s latest book Sparks Like Stars to give away to three lucky readers.  Enter the draw to win! Offer closes July 19.. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="536" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Armchair-Traveller-facebook-post_Nadia-2-1024x536.jpg" alt="Nadia Hashimi Free Book Offer - enter the Sparks Like Stars draw. Closes July 11" class="wp-image-8096" srcset="https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Armchair-Traveller-facebook-post_Nadia-2-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Armchair-Traveller-facebook-post_Nadia-2-300x157.jpg 300w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Armchair-Traveller-facebook-post_Nadia-2-768x402.jpg 768w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Armchair-Traveller-facebook-post_Nadia-2.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> ENTER FREE BOOK DRAW But before we get to Nadia, just a reminder that Binge Reading is launching on Patreon. For as little as a cup of coffee a month, you can support the show and get exclusive bonus content about books you won’t want to put down and the authors who write them. Check out www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading for more details. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why she wants her books to humanize the news Writing novels while still working as a physician The ‘privilege’ of patient doctor conversations Her family’s loss of a way of life in Afghanistan Teen fiction that challenges rigid gender boundaries Living across two cultures Where to find Nadia Hashimi:  Website: https://nadiahashimibooks.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nadiahashimibooks/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NadiaHashimiBooks Twitter: @NadiaHasimi Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7273667.Nadia_Hashimi What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here’s Nadia. Introducing author Nadia Hashimi Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Nadia, and welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you with us. Nadia Hashimi: Hi, Jenny. It’s so great to be here with you. Jenny Wheeler: You are an international bestselling writer and Sparks Like Stars, which is your most recent book and the one we are discussing today, is your sixth novel and your fourth one for adults. You have done a couple of youth books as well, but they all draw heavily on your own background as the daughter of an Afghan family who moved to the States when you were young. Nadia Hashimi – Best selling author and her latest book Half Life, Re-imagining the life of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie Tell us a little bit about that heritage, which comes through in all of your books so far. Nadia Hashimi: My parents immigrated from Afghanistan in the early part of the 1970s. They were a couple of the first people from their families and of the Afghan population to come to the United States. Soon after they left, many others started to follow because of the unrest that had started to bubble up in Afghanistan. Then of course in 1979, with the Soviet invasion, when it fell into a state of war and conflict, you started to see widespread movements of refugees. I have grown up watching members of my extended family flee from Afghanistan, flee from the conflict – whether it was in the war with the Soviets or during the Civil War or the Taliban regime – and moving to various parts of the world as refugees. These stories and these struggles have been part of our collective experience. Parallels with Nadia’s own life Jenny Wheeler: Sparks Like Stars explores the dilemma of Aryana, an Afghan American physician in a New York hospital. She is fully integrated into the American way of life, but still haunted by traumatic events that happened in her childhood in Kabul. There are quite a number of similarities between you and that character – you are also a physician and of Afghan heritage. We don’t want to give away too much of the story because things happen in the story that we don’t want people to anticipate ahead of time, but you have said that this character is probably the closest of the ones you’ve created so far to yourself. Can you talk to us a little bit about the similarities? I guess one thing is that your own departure from Afghanistan was not so totally traumatic. It was before the really traumatic events started to develop, wasn’t it? Nadia Hashimi: In fact, it was even more than that. I was born and raised in the United States, and so I’ve never had a departure from Afghanistan. In that regard, this character and I are incredibly different, and we have incredibly different experiences. The ways in which we are similar, and what I have drawn upon my own experience to relate, is that we both have an Afghan American identity. We both have the Afghan culture within us. We’ve grown up with pieces of it. And we both were physicians in some phase of training in New York City on 9/11. Unwelcome center of attention I was a first-year medical student in Brooklyn, which was just a bit of a way from where the Twin Towers stood in Manhattan on 9/11, and so I remember that day very clearly. I remember the weeks following, I remember the reaction of the country, and I remember going from the Afghan American community being relatively anonymous in the United States to becoming a center of attention. And not just us, people who were mistaken for Afghans as well. There were a lot of questions about allegiances and what’s going on and where did these terrorists come from, and what’s actually happening in Afghanistan. A lot of eyes were suddenly turned onto Afghan Americans. It was a pivotal moment in the experience of an Afghan American, which is why I wanted to make sure I incorporated it. But that is where the similarities end. This particular character has a personal history and has experienced a trauma that I could not even, I want to say, imagine. I did have to imagine it in order to write the story, but it is so far from my reality. I have been fortunate not to have had this kind of experience. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Jenny Wheeler: Before the trauma we are referring to arises, the opening of the book sets a lovely picture of Afghanistan before all the wars took place – the terrible decades we have seen over the last 30 or 40 years. It is almost a nostalgic picture, a beautiful picture of close family life and food and community. Is it important to you to preserve that picture of Afghanistan, because we have seen so many decades of terrible pictures coming through on the news. We have probably got an impression now that it is an absolutely destroyed country. Nostalgia for a lost homeland Nadia Hashimi: Absolutely. One of the reasons I wanted to write this story was because I have grown up with our home steeped in that nostalgia, with this grief that has persisted in our homes and our families for a homeland that has been lost. That nostalgia was for that particular time period in Afghanistan’s history in which my mother could go to school, she could become a civil engineer, her sisters could go to school. Kabul in the 1970s – a steady progression of women’s rights – Amnesty International – and Nadia Hashimi’s mother was educated as an engineer. Music could be celebrated and heard in the streets and there was a sense of freedom. You had Westerners backpacking through the country. It was very idyllic and there is so much to be nostalgic about. That is not to say that everything was perfect in the country, and that the cities were exactly the same as what was happening in the countryside. But that being said, it was a country at peace. I think that when we take a look at what is happening with the Afghan diaspora around the world, there’s a sense of grief, of mourning for all that has been lost. Jenny Wheeler: You say in the notes at the back of the book that the title Sparks Like Stars comes from a poem by an Afghan poet also named Nadia – Nadia Anjuman. I looked her up because I was intrigued by the title. She was a gifted poet who met a tragic end, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that title and what drew you to her work? Title inspired by a famous poet Nadia Hashimi: Sure. The funny story about the title of this book is that I am horrible at coming up with titles. I am fortunate that I have a wonderful literary agent who represents my work and somehow manages to find titles that fit the stories perfectly once I have finished writing the pages within. That is exactly what she did with this story as well. For my previous works I have had the titles drawn from the works of Rumi or Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poets. For this one I had in my mind that I wanted a poet who was a woman, and I would love to do something a bit more contemporary. Nadia Anjuman – celebrated and tragic Afghan poet. I was looking, and I hadn’t discussed this with my agent Helen and one day, out of the blue, I get a phone call from her, and she says, I think I might have a title for you. This is what she pitched to me, and I liked it. Then she told me who it was by, and it was exactly what I had been looking for. She didn’t know that. Going back and reading the rest of the poem and the context, and then hearing her life story and the tragic end of her life that came at her husband’s hands – it spoke to the kind of grief and pain that the central character of this book was experiencing. Jenny Wheeler: I think it depends on the translation because I looked up the translation and the one I found online didn’t actually have the lines “sparks like stars” in it. It is a poem called The Night Work, or something the night, is that right? The Night’s Poetry Nadia Hashimi: It is called The Night’s Poetry and the title is a little bit of a twist, but she had written:“From a bright cloud falls such pure light –there is no need for my crying. Sparks pour from my sighs like starsThe pigeon of prayer nestles in my empyrean” It is a bit of a twist, but I think that it captures that idea, which is a fiery exhalation, and when you think of what relief each breath we take brings, to imagine it fired up with sparks is something. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. All your novels tackle similar emotional and confronting issues of the havoc wreaked by war and particularly the way that war effects women. A House Without Windows has been described as the Afghan Orange is the New Black, and it examines the fate of women jailed, some of them for what might not be considered crimes at all, but social challenges like getting pregnant outside of wedlock. A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi In A House Without Windows your main character is being falsely accused of murdering her husband, almost gang bullied into being charged with that offense. What is it about these scenes that makes you want to write about them? Nadia Hashimi: I’m intrigued by injustice. I’m intrigued by stories of how policies or decisions that are made from up on high actually impact people in a very individual way, in a very real way. That is what I like to explore through these novels; to say, what is the impact of whether or not two countries should go to war? The impact is on the lives of individuals. The impact is on the life of a 10-year-old child, an 11-year-old child, a mother. House Without Windows For A House Without Windows, I had been reading about women who were imprisoned in Afghanistan for crimes of immorality, and various ways of chastising women for having agency, and actually criminalizing their agency. Then there were surprising things as well that I came upon during my research, as I became more and more intrigued, like the way women were able to develop such a sense of community and sisterhood within the confines of a prison as well, even going so far as to try to organize weddings within the confines of those walls, and the way they had their children with them. It is those kinds of elements that draw me. It’s injustices, it’s points of friction, issues upon which we can make improvements, we can learn from, we can grow from, and then have a real impact on lives. Jenny Wheeler: In an earlier work, When the Moon is Low, you trace an Afghan mother who is forced to flee with her children to Europe to escape the Taliban, and the desperate vulnerability such families face. This is extremely topical, and very rarely do we get a chance to get inside the lives of a family like that because they are so far down the social ladder. How did you do the research for this book, because it obviously is quite a way from your own personal life as well? When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi – Tender family stories Nadia Hashimi: It is, and it isn’t. We talked about my family earlier. My extended family has been fleeing Afghanistan for decades, and I have watched this happen. From the time I was very young, I would be sitting around the kitchen table and listening to my parents and other relatives discussing who had made it to where, who had been accepted into which country. Bearing witness to tragedy Some people were moving with all the right documents and others were having to take enormous risks with their loved ones, with their children, to try to find a way to safety and some kind of safe haven. I have grown up with this talk about documents and affidavits and letters of testimony, and how people are making the case for themselves and then how many are denied. This has been kitchen table talk for the majority of my life, so I have grown up with these stories. I’ve grown up with this understanding and in that book, I wanted to take people a bit back. I think we use the word ‘refugee’ as if these people were born with that title and that is their forever destiny. But ‘refugee’ does not identify who that person was from the moment they took their first breath, nor is it a terminal diagnosis. People are refugees for a time in their lives, but that does not mean that is everything they are, and I wanted to rewind for a bit and have people take a look at this one particular family and see who they were before they became refugees, before that label was assigned to them. Jenny Wheeler: You can identify with the mother’s pure terror because one of her sons tries to take the role of the man in the family and disappears in a city where they are all strangers. That would be the most terrifying thing to have to face. That story is a great heart tugger. Humanizing the evening news Nadia Hashimi: I appreciate that. The goal of any of these stories is to humanize what is happening around us and to show the connections. The mother in that story is feeling what any mother would feel, and that’s my goal. The responses I have gotten that have really made me feel so happy with the reception of that book is when people have said, I could imagine myself in that mother’s shoes and I don’t know what I would’ve done in her shoes. And oh my gosh, I felt for that mother. Understanding that from the point of view of either a parent or a friend or a loved one or a child, that we are all the same, we are made up of the same set of emotions, we all are hurt in the same ways with these circumstances. That has been really gratifying. Jenny Wheeler: It really puts a person into those boats you see on the news sometimes, that’s for sure. You tackle another cultural phenomenon which I was not aware of. In the book One Half from the East, bacha posh – this system that developed socially for preteen girls to dress as boys, to give them a little bit more freedom from rigid gender identities. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. 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You have tackled this in two books – an adult novel and a young adult novel. I gather that it must be something you feel deeply about to write two books about it. Challenging rigid gender norms Nadia Hashimi: I wrote the adult book first and I wrote from the point of view of a bacha posh, a girl who is dressed as a boy. This is a custom that happens in Afghanistan to varying extents. One Half From The East by Nadia Hashimi It really comes out of a sense of pride in having a son and a sense of loss in not having a son, so there is a superstitious belief that if you dress one of your younger children – a girl – as a boy, then the next child born into the family naturally will be an actual boy. Sometimes it is done for that reason, and sometimes it is done for logistical reasons of being able to have a child who can navigate the outside world with a little bit more freedom than a young girl could. Traditionally, it is undone before the child reaches puberty, because at that point gender takes on a much more meaning. I thought that if I wanted to talk about the difference between being a boy versus a girl and what that would mean in Afghan society, who better to tell us than a child who has lived both of those experiences? That is why I chose to write the story from the point of view of a bacha posh. I came upon an old photograph, an archived photograph, black and white, of one of the King’s harems, and he had harem guards who were women dressed as men because he did not trust men to guard his harem. An introduction to book clubs When I came across that photograph I thought, here I can tie these two individuals, and go back in Afghanistan’s history and see what the experience has been for girls, and what it’s like at various moments to play the part of the opposite gender and walk in those shoes. When I wrote that story, it circulated among book clubs. That was the book that really introduced me to book clubs, which has been amazing. I have joined conversations, and the conversations around that one were so vibrant. People had so much to say and so much to chew on, that my agent suggested to me to write a similar story, but to create it for a younger audience. Not encouraged, but not forbidden, the Afghan phenomenon of girls being raised as boys… And so I wrote One Half from the East, which is a book that starts to explore, what does it mean to be a girl? What does it mean to dress as the opposite gender when you are looking at societal expectations that are very traditional? Jenny Wheeler: Sorry, I thought One Half from the East was the adult version. What was the adult version called? Nadia Hashimi: The adult version is called The Pearl that Broke its Shell. That is about a young girl who is dressed as a bacha posh until she is 13 years old. At that time, she is married off to a warlord and she becomes the fourth bride to a local warlord, because her father is opium addicted and marries her and her sisters off. Children bearing adult anxieties It is a difficult read. It deals with a lot of the issues that Afghans are facing – but not all Afghans, of course. The issues of poverty, the impact of opium addiction, stress, anxiety, depression, mental health, and the impact that education has on young people and what opportunities that could open up for them. Jenny Wheeler: Your other young adult novel, The Sky at Our Feet, is about an Afghan boy in the US who comes to the realization that his mother is an illegal immigrant, and that launches in him a fear of what would happen if she was deported. I couldn’t imagine a more topical issue than this one over the last presidential occupancy. What sort of response did you get to that book? Nadia Hashimi: I am really proud to say that one has received a warm response. I have had students in schools reading that book. It’s not meant to take on a very political position. I think that at the end of the day, these political positions come down to, what do you imagine? What would you want for an individual? What would you want for a family if they were your neighbors? That is the point of these stories – to start to humanize them, not to dictate a political stance but rather to talk about the impact of these policies, and how things might play out on a micro level. It is just a story of a child, and all of a sudden he’s dealt this hand. He makes this realization about the logistics of his family and the circumstances of his mom’s arrival in the United States, and what has led her to overstay her visa. The secret to combining careers I wanted it, again, to be a very humanizing story, and experience what this kind of internal conflict means for him when he doesn’t know if home is home anymore. If this home that is the only home he has known still welcomes his mom, will he be on his own? It is in the backdrop of fabulous New York City with adventures at every turn. He meets another young child who is also dealing with a very different issue – a health issue – but again she is trying to figure out how she can assert herself in her own life and in her own space. And so the two of them together go on some adventures in New York City as they start to make some realizations about themselves. Jenny Wheeler: Great. Turning now away from specific books to your wider career, you have been a full-time physician. I gather you are now back into the writing full-time but when you got started, how on earth did you manage to work as a physician and still write these very demanding books? From emergency room to desk Nadia Hashimi: I was working in an emergency room in Washington, DC at a children’s hospital. I was working one day, doing a shift, and then on days that I wasn’t working, I had started to tap out a story on my computer.  I did it little by little. I think it helped me that I was expecting my first child when I started writing. I thought, if I’m going to write a story and if I’m going to give this a shot, I want to get it done before the baby is due. It helped to have a very natural deadline looming on the horizon. I started to write about the things I wanted to talk about, the stories I wanted to read, the stories I wished I could find on the shelf as a reader. Especially when I was younger, we didn’t have many books on the shelves in which I could see myself represented, in which I could see my family members represented, and so it felt really important to me to start to tell those stories. I did not imagine, when I was writing the first one, where this would go, where it would take me. I just gave it a shot and one thing led to another, so over the years I have spent less and less time as a pediatrician as I have enjoyed spending more and more time being able to write, share these stories and then talk with people around the world about these tales. How Nadia got started writing Jenny Wheeler: Was there anything that particularly got you started writing fiction? Had you had a lifelong desire to do that? How did it come about? Nadia Hashimi: It was a dare, would you believe? My husband actually. Previous to our marriage, we had been living in different cities, and so in the first year we were married, there were things we learned or habits we learned. One of the things he learned in the first year of our marriage was just how much time I like to spend reading books. One day he told me, you love books so much, why don’t you write a story? It felt like a bit of a challenge, but he is a believer that if you dream of something, you should do it. I really hadn’t thought of writing until then. When I was much younger, I had dreamed of writing stories but then I took on a very different path in my academics. I thought at one point, well, maybe I can, maybe I will. That is when I sat down and said, if I’m going to write, what would I write about? So it was a bit of a challenge from him, bit of a dare. I always give him credit for starting this. The secret of Nadia’s success Jenny Wheeler: Now looking back over this career, is there one thing you feel you did more than any other that might have helped you to get to this point, where you’ve got all these published books and an international readership? Nadia Hashimi: The one thing I have done to get me here is write what I am passionate about. It is very, very hard to sit down and spend so much time away from family, away from other responsibilities, without any certainty about where this effort is going and if it’s going to lead to anything at all. To do that, there has to be, at the heart of it, some real passion for the story at hand. I think that is what has got me to this point – to put myself into the shoes of my characters, to get to know my characters, to talk about these issues, to spread the word, to do so in a way that honors the struggles, that does justice to the people who are showing such resilience, that shines a light on the universalities of all of our stories, that will talk to people about these not really being Afghan issues. These are human issues that are happening within an Afghan context. What Nadia is reading now Jenny Wheeler: We are starting to come to the end of our time together and it is The Joys of Binge Reading, so we do want to hear about your reading tastes currently. Are you a binge reader, and even if you are not a binge reader, what do you like to read at the moment, and what would you like to recommend for our listeners? Of Women And Salt by Gabriela Garcia – one of Nadia Hashimi’s favourite reads Nadia Hashimi: I like to read, I read a bit diversely and then I read in different ways as well. I usually have one book that I’m reading in a hard copy and that one is usually the slowest going. Then I have something I am reading on my Kindle, an e-book, and I usually have something I am listening to as well. Sometimes on top of that I’ve got something I’m reading aloud with the children, although they have been doing a bit more reading on their own.  My recent reads – I have just finished The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, which was amazing. It took my breath away. By the ending I realized I was in love with these characters. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green is a nonfiction book which is very tenderly told, of a spree of murders that happened in the queer community in New York City. I have just finished listening to Of Women and Salt, by Gabriela Garcia, a Cuban writer, which was fantastic. Those are some of my recent ones and I would recommend all of them. What would she change? Jenny Wheeler: Tell us a bit more about Of Women and Salt. Nadia Hashimi: Of Women and Salt was a very immersive book and one that was a bit different. It has Cuban origins and talks about a very complicated family history, but again is a story about displacement, immigration, and the journeys, but told in a very female centered way. The voices are all female centered, and so it is a story of motherhood, of daughters, of legacy and these shared struggles and how they are processed differently in generation. Jenny Wheeler: Sounds great. Circling around and looking back down the tunnel of time, at this stage of your career, if you were doing it all over again, what, if anything, would you change? Nadia Hashimi: I don’t know if I would change anything. I am a believer that every step – right or wrong, every stumble, every fall, has informed where I am today and has changed me and made me the person who was able to write Sparks Like Stars. I am really glad for the reception this book has received. If I were to go back and look, and I don’t reread my previous books because there are passages I will look at and I’ll be like, oh my gosh, this was written in such and such a way, and I should have changed it, and I should have done this, and I should’ve done that. That hindsight can be really toxic, and so I believe in looking forward and looking ahead. Privileged private moments Would I have wanted to skip being a pediatrician and go straight to writing? I think about that sometimes, but my nights, my days, in the emergency room, being in close quarters, in those privileged private moments with families in difficult situations – that has informed me as a person as well, that has informed my writing. I think all of it comes together in a way that is a very unique journey and one that I would not change. And I can’t anyway, so I’ll keep it the way it is. Jenny Wheeler: It is nice that you have mentioned looking forward, because looking forward for the next 12 months or so, what projects have you got on the boil and what is your time going to be taken with in the next year? Have you got new projects under development? Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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Within the last few weeks, my children have been able to go back to school in person, at least part-time. I have four children 11 and under, so suffice it to say that it has been a difficult year of writing at home with everyone here. I am looking forward to being able to finish what I am working on now, which is a young adult book. That will be my first venture into the YA book world. Then I’ve got some ideas for another adult story to come after that, so hopefully I will be getting into those. Where to find Nadia online Jenny Wheeler: You have had nearly a year of homeschooling, have you? Nadia Hashimi: We have. It has been over a year; we’ve learned a lot. It has been a challenge, but it has been a challenge for everyone. This is not what I would have wanted for my children, I wouldn’t want it for anyone, but I think that we hopefully will come out of it understanding our communities better, understanding our needs better, understanding our school system better. And of course, as a physician, I’m hoping that we can understand how better to prepare and have some more safety nets in place. Jenny Wheeler: I’m sure you hear a lot from your readers. How can they reach you online, and what is the best way to find you? Nadia Hashimi: I am very easy to find. I may be too easy to find. I really do enjoy engaging with readers. I love being able to join book clubs and round out the conversation, because I appreciate that when people read these stories, they want to know more about what is happening in Afghanistan or want to tie it to what is happening currently in Afghanistan. I am involved with advocacy circles, so I am pretty aware of what’s going on and where the issues are standing today. Social media links I am on Instagram. I am rarely on Twitter, but I am there. I’m on Facebook. I can always be reached through my website as well. There is a contact box in there. Jenny Wheeler: That’s fabulous. Thank you so much for being part of Binge Reading and I am sure that listeners will want to look up not just Sparks Like Stars, but the whole lot of your work. Nadia Hashimi: Thank you so much. I hope so. I hope people like it, and I am so grateful to anyone who picks up the story because I know there are so many great books out there. Jenny Wheeler: Thanks a lot. Nadia Hashimi: Thank you. If you enjoyed Nadia you might also enjoy Sharon Maas’ Celebrating Diversity stories that fit outside the box. . . . <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87-1024x576.png" alt="Sharon Maas on The Joys of binge Reading podcast - promoting and celebrating cultural diversity." class="wp-image-8173" srcset="https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87-1024x576.png 1024w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87-300x169.png 300w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87-768x432.png 768w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87-1536x864.png 1536w, https://storage.googleapis.com/jenny-wheeler/2021/07/Sharon-Maas-87.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> LISTEN TO SHARON MAAS Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

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