When I was little I wanted to be an archeologist or the first lady on the moon. I lived in a small town where my father was the village dentist. This was the farthest thing from the moon or digging up ancient fossils. As I got older, I dreamed about making gobs of money on Wall Street while living in a luxury two bedroom apartment. Somehow I got that dream, and I hated it. Yet along the way, good things happened—I travelled from Africa to Latin America, got married, and had two wonderful children.

When I was five months pregnant with my first child, I took a business trip to China. Having a Sunday afternoon free, I climbed the Great Wall. In my belly, my son-to-be felt heavier than any stone in the wall. When he was born, I got two hundred emails while I was still in the hospital. They weren't all congratulations. Do this and do that. All urgent business matters. With my hormones out of whack and the burning desire to breast-feed, I did the unthinkable and quit my glamorous job to stay home full-time with my son. Despite the constant changing of diapers and keeping up with my son who eventually had the energy of an insect with twenty legs, I started to read again. At first, I fell into my old bad habits of reading business and economic journals, but then I slowly discovered novels and some poetry. After I completed Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, I held the book tight to my chest and wondered, how did he do that?

A few years after my second child was born, I left my beloved New York and moved to California. Eventually, both my children were in pre-school and I found myself with a bit more time. Hesitant to step back into the corporate world for fear of not being there for my children, I started to secretly dream of becoming a writer. Yet I just didn’t know how. It seemed so impossible to write a book. I had never done a creative thing in my life even though I was itching to. A year or so later, I finally found the courage to show my insides to anyone who would read my prose, and walked into my first creative writing class at a local university. Everyone had a manuscript in hand except me. I felt foolish. I had nothing, except my dreams, and my determination.

We were given various assignments and I was terrible at each one. The teacher would read mine out-loud (anonymously—thank God) and rip it apart each time. It was the perfect example of how not to write. However, for some insane reason I loved writing and I just couldn’t give up. When the course ended, I came back for more punishment and signed up again. Something amazing happened during round two—I suddenly got the hang of it. I was becoming a real writer. Our assignment was to write a first chapter. I wrote more than the first chapter. I wrote an entire novel which became The Echo of Sand.

When I first sat down to write The Echo of Sand, the story did not come to me immediately. I took a deep breath and blew into the blank computer screen. Unfortunately, no magic words appeared. I considered myself to have a boring life —the daughter of a village dentist. Who would ever be interested in me? But my husband, now he is very interesting. I’ve always told him that he should write a book. Born in Beirut, Lebanon; caught in a bloody civil war only to escape under gunfire in a small boat to Cyprus; landed in America speaking no English. He had every reason to fail, but only saw opportunities to succeed. By the time I met him in graduate school in Southern California, I remember him with two sets of clothing (one for cold days, one for hot). Yet he had so much determination, and so many dreams. He talked all the time about Lebanon with the same nostalgia and passion as if it was still the Paris of the Middle East.

When we were married, we travelled together to Lebanon where we saw a country half in ruin, half in resurrection from a twenty-year civil war. It was clear to my husband that the country he had been yearning for was long gone. Our plans to one day live in Lebanon seemed impractical. My husband wondered if it was his destiny never to feel at home. As an Arab American he feels more Lebanese in America and more American in Lebanon.

With the blank screen waiting for me, it didn't take long to search my heart, and find my husband and his two countries inside.