NORA NADJARIAN
1) Where are you from? Why?
I’m from the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea. My grandparents were Armenian refugees who landed in Cyprus in the early part of the 20th Century. They told me heart-breaking stories. I grew up a Cypriot with an Armenian soul.
2) Generate a relevant formula.
Love = Sometimes + Infinity
3) You write both poetry and fiction. What’s the difference?
Poetry is life with all the feeling in it. Love of words, the way you see the world, the way the world sees you, what comforts me. A stream, the shape of everything that ever was, what people will read and know about me, what a star feels like when it’s held in the hand. Fiction is a kind of jealous sibling, tries to do the same things, in a more orderly way. People sit up, people pay attention, you tell them a story, they listen. And sometimes I do both, together, and people ask “Is that a poem?”, “Is that a story?” It could be both, it could be neither. I don’t really care, as long as what I write touches people’s lives.
4) In your Ficionaut profile, it says that your “poems and short stories have been included in various anthologies and journals in Cyprus, Germany, India, Israel, New Zealand, the UK and the United States.” Please write a short speech entitled “What is International Literature?” that you would deliver to an audience of your choosing. (Make sure to tell us who is in the audience.)
Dear Friends,
Something strange happened to me last week in Stockholm. A taxi driver driving me to my hotel asked if literature was big in Cyprus and if I knew anything about the Millennium trilogy which has just been made into a film. I said I didn’t but it turned out that I did.
I had no idea that he was actually talking about Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the two other books in the series, which I’ve seen on best-sellers lists but never read. “Lisbeth Salander,” he said, and it suddenly clicked. “That’s the name of the girl in the books.” A taxi driver who reads crime novels, I thought. And a few days later, on the flight home, I read in a magazine that Stieg Larsson died of a heart attack, aged 50, after climbing seven flights of stairs.
Why am I telling you all this? I suppose to show you the strange ways in which books connect people and people connect to books and that authors are people after all, and how literature is not really international, but essentially what people around the world can relate to. I became interested in Lisbeth Salander only last week because she was created by a man who went up seven flights of stairs when the elevator broke down. I am convinced Alma Mereminski is a girl who lives in Brooklyn, New York, somewhere not too far from Nicole Krauss’ apartment.
I live and write in Cyprus and my story “Ledra Street” is about a “Green Line” which exists but which is invisible and people have asked me (in New Zealand) if the story really happened: if I accidentally caused a man’s death because of a cat, and what it feels like to live on a divided island.
Why am I telling you all this? Because you, the members of my audience, dear friends, are the people whose “people” kept me company many years ago and most likely will continue to do so for many years to come. For making my life richer, my writing more creative, my dreams more colourful, my outlook more international, and the world smaller, I thank you: Marguerite Duras, Etgar Keret, Nicole Krauss, Kazuo Ishiguro, Manuel Rivas, Elfriede Jelinek, Janet Frame…
I know this is a dream. I will wake up. I will write about it.
5) You’re geographically from Cyprus, a country whose history has been troubled by conflict between Greeks and Turks and Cypriots. Please respond to the following prompt: Peace and Cyprus.
Peace and Cyprus don’t really go well together in any given formula. I once wrote a story in which the sentence “There is no solution to the Cyprus problem…” is repeated over and over by politicians during a TV debate. I thought it was funny at the time. I don’t think it’s funny any more.
6) What is there, and what should we do about it?
There is learning and we should learn from it. I have done things which cannot be undone, but I have learned. What I have learned is not necessarily a lesson that I’d like to teach, but I have learned, accidentally or otherwise.
7) This question is the “humanity” question. Express/Present one or several truths about our species using whatever media you see fit
“Portrait of Dora Maar”, Pablo Picasso.
I think she’s beautiful, and so were the arms which held her and the hand which painted her. So was their love. Each wall is white, each canvas empty: just paint it with a truth. That’s humanity.
