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| The Alhambra palace in Granada today. |
Jessica Knauss: How long have you been writing?
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Lilian Gafni: I’d say
on and off for about thirty years. I started writing my first book, Hello
Exile, back in the 80s when I was working for the Commission on Soviet Jewry.
Russian Jews were then discriminated from entering university, some academic
and public professions were barred to them, and they were also prevented from
traveling and emigrating from the USSR. Many protested publicly against the
discrimination. They were then called the Refuseniks, having been refused
visas. One Refusenik was Ida Nudel who put out a sign from her balcony asking,
“KGB Give Me a Visa.” The authorities arrested her on civil disobedience charge,
sent her to prison then sentenced her to four years labor in Siberian Exile.
From that experience I corresponded with Ida and was inspired to write her
story.
JK: Please tell us about the Flower from Castile
Trilogy. What inspired you to write it?
LG: My ancestors were Spanish Jews, or Sephardim, who left Spain
during the infamous 1492 expulsion. I was inspired because I lived in a
Sephardic family that spoke Ladino. The name Sephardim derives from the Hebrew
word Sepharad, meaning Spain.
At that time, Queen
Isabella and King Ferdinand struggled to conquer the Moors in Granada and
reclaim all of Spain under the Catholic religion. Forced conversions began
earlier, but as soon as Spain became unified under one flag and one religion,
they required all other religious and ethnic groups to be converted as well.
Spanish Jews had one choice: convert or leave the country. The Moors had lived
by then for more than 700 years in Iberia and the Jews had arrived after the destruction
of the second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD.
The subject of Jews being
forced to leave under duress always intrigued me. Why did these law-abiding
Spaniard Jews have to leave a land that was their home for over a thousand
years? The more I learned about the Sephardim, the more I felt close to those
exiles of long ago. What thoughts, fears, and hope did they feel and
experience? How did they preserve their Jewish heritage in secret? How did they
escape the Inquisition, or fall into its clutches? As I put these thoughts on
paper, a whole world opened up before me. The characters, the families and the
individuals directly responsible for that exodus became real and spoke in their
own voices. Then the characters opened a door for me to peer inside and
discover their world.
The major character,
Isabella Obrigon, a sixteen-year-old girl, with a privileged life leads the
story and connects all the players. On the eve of her betrothal, she is
kidnapped and thrust onto the world of persecuted Jews. I thought at great
length on how to describe Isabella when it dawned on me: if her eyes saw the
story, then her eyes were speaking to me. That's when I realized I was
describing my mother's eyes! My mother, Rachel Palombo, was a most beautiful
woman with emerald green eyes. I decided then that Isabella's eyes were going
to be modeled on Rachel Palombo's eyes. The other characters were modeled on
real men and women who lived in that time period. Only their names were
changed. These characters were fluid, changing with the circumstances of those
terrible times. The story took on a life of its own as it developed, and the
characters spoke to me. Some of them pleaded for their lives, some of them
risked their lives to protect others, and some fell in love under the most
inauspicious of circumstances. In the end, these characters fought for their
land, their livelihoods, and the futures of their families. Two hundred
thousand Spanish Jews made the fateful decision to leave Spain in 1492.
JK: What kind of research did you have to do?
LG: In addition to
reading many books on The Alhambra Decree, the Inquisition, and Columbus, I
used all media and avenues to find accurate information such as the libraries,
Wikipedia, Sephardic organizations, etc. To understand the country and its
people, I traveled to Spain and visited the locales then immersed myself in the
lore, legends and beliefs of its people.
JK: You mentioned that you speak Ladino, a form of Spanish mixed with Hebrew words, which is a well preserved link to the way the Sephardim spoke in Spain before the expulsion. It's a historical linguist's dream come true! Did that language skill help your research?
LG: After the Alhambra
Decree exiled the Sephardim from Spain in 1492, they kept their Castilian
dialect, called Ladino, in their
families for generations. It helped me somewhat to be able to read documents in
the Ladino language. Although my entire family spoke the language, Ladino
remained an underutilized tongue. It is now being revived in the country of
Israel.
JK: Your book trailers are
really well done. Did you do them yourself?
LG: Thank you Jessica.
I don’t have that magical touch to create them myself. I used the professionals
Trailer To The Stars for the two book trailers.
JK: When is book three coming out?
LG: I’m now working on
Book Three: The New Haven. It’s scheduled to be published this year.
JK: Congratulations! What would you say to writers who'd like to follow in your footsteps?
LG: There’s always a
beginning, a middle, and an end to everything. I was a beginning writer and
wrote by fits and spurts. Now I’m lucky enough to be writing full time. As
writers we strive to entertain, to inform, and help in any capacity those
seeking questions. What motivates me, as well as others, is having the ability
to translate our thoughts and be useful with our writing. We may struggle to
join the community of published writers in general, but we’re also enjoying the
process at the same time. We need to think that our writing has its purpose,
and in the end everything else will fall into place.
Another way to motivate us to write is to be
inspired by using a banner, a photo or the motto of a famous and prolific
writer that quotes in his or her own words why they write. Mine is framed on
the wall above my computer and it says:
“Writers help summon people to a vision of human betterment. It is not
unnatural for writers to be concerned about the human estate or to deal with
those universals of human experience. Their primary goal is to their
consciences. They create an awareness not just to things as they are, but as
they ought to be.” -- Norman Cousins.
Writer
should believe that they have the power
to create and be published. That their voices have weight and should be heard.
I equate the struggles to writing and being published as being armored with a
pen, a saber or lance and fighting for our own personal time to write. Be a
soldier for your own cause. Escritura
feliz! Happy writing!
JK: Thanks for being on my blog!
LG: Thank you, Jessica, for having me!
