May 10, 2013
My first novel, Gabriella and Dr. Duggan’s Secret Dimensional Transport Machine, is clearly a science fiction novel but I also tried to inject other things such as mystery, suspense, drama and romance. Here is an excerpt:
I try to steer her mind away, “Mom, tell me how it was with you and Dad.” I know they loved each other, I could see it. And I need to know that I can somehow find someone in this caged up system they have me in.
She looks back out into the woods, blankly staring for a time, rolling waves of plants piled up, vines full of life growing into and on top of each other. “You know this story. I have told you many times. We were matched.”
“No, Momma. Tell me. Did you fall in love? How was it?” I never dared ask such a question before.
She glances back at me then quickly away, water pooling in her eyes, exhales a long deep breath, then opens her mouth, “He was so handsome. Dashing. He came to our small village, a pile of cottages really, rough hewn stone walls with flat cement roofs, our precious water tanks on top, him wearing a beautiful suit and in a very nice car that looked so out of place among the donkeys on our dirt roads. He was there to attend a wedding of some distant relative so far removed that they only sent him, one representative from his family to attend. I was just a poor dirty, village girl at the market for some chick peas and cucumbers for my mother when I saw him. I hid behind the edge of a crumbling block wall so he wouldn’t see me and I followed him. He looked so foreign and exotic, nothing like our local boys. Overhearing where he was going I ran home and begged my mother to allow me to go to the wedding. The village was very small and we were almost all related; most of the village would be there anyway. I spent the rest of the whole day trying to clean up as best I could but the only passable dress I found in mom’s chest was an old one that had been in the family for several generations, a traditional black heavy-velvet dress with ornamental stitching and sequins, a leftover from the days of the Bedouin. It was nice, don’t get me wrong, it just wasn’t made to fit my body.”
She goes on, looking directly at me now, speaking more and more quickly, excitedly, lost in the moment of her memories, “I put my long dark brown hair up on top of my head in big curls flowing down to my shoulders and got one of my cousins to paint up my face bright and lively like the hand of a harsh cold wind had smacked my face red. I tried to keep my feet under the table most of the night because I only had my old, terrible shoes, but when he saw me, and the way he looked at me, I forgot all about them as the strong scent of wedding flowers, jasmine and lilac, yellow roses and cinnamon, clove and sandalwood, seemed to suddenly float around me.”
She stops talking, looking down at her hand resting in her lap, her wedding ring dull, the pattern worn away in parts; many years full of hard work had taken a toll.
“I thought you were matched?”
“Well… Yes… Of course. We never spoke that night. Oh no… We couldn’t. It would have been scandalous. Neither of us were properly represented. The next day word got around that he might be interested and the matchmakers started checking him out. About a month later, the longest month of my life, a month of longing and expectant but fearful hope, he came around with his family and asked for my hand. It was the first day that we spoke. But I loved him already.”
“Loved him? How could you love him? All you did was look at him from across the hall?”
“I can’t explain it, Mija,” She says, standing, exhaling, caressing my hair softly as she heads off to the kitchen, “Love is strange like that.” From the next room, more optimistically, “Don’t worry, we will find you someone.”
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