An Interview Rory Kilalea: Film-maker, Playwright and Author of The Arabian Princess - Page 4

Do you write every day?

Yes, every day but not always on the same thing. The hardest pieces are the ones I try to put on the backburner, which is the worst thing any writer could do. For example, “The Reluctant Mombe” was really tough. I had the experience of meeting a woman in the situation of being forgotten as a person of age. To try and retain truth and be honest at the same time took some soul-searching as well as being ruthless.

The story began when I was employed by the BBC to interview old people who had been forgotten by their families and who where living in penury. To divorce oneself from the horrible reality of seeing old people who had grown up with hope and now felt discarded was very hard. Mortality and the finiteness of human loyalties and love were the issues I had to contend with and in fact divorce myself from when I wrote the piece.

The other hard piece is section of my novel which deals with Zimbabwe — again the same problem — divorcing myself from the realities of a hard-felt life.

What is the novel about?

The Disappointed Diplomat is about a young man trying to forget his home in Zimbabwe and finding that home is not only a place, but a state of mind. . He walks away from the woman he has fallen in love with and asks the question, "Perhaps the bus driver will know the way home…”

The man is trying to forget the heartache of a broken love affair — both with his country and with his black girlfriend .(He is white). He has to deal with the expectations of the English establishment and, much like the people who search out spies for their own cause, he feels he is being courted for reasons beyond his comprehension.

He never does have the full answers. Perhaps the novel is more of a journey to a stage where he can at least ask the salient question knowing that there will be another journey ahead.

Which aspects of the work that you put into the book did you find most difficult?

The middle section of the novel which is about Zimbabwe — the passion I have for my home and the plethora of ideas were too much for the shape and structure — the old "more is less" dictum was very hard to follow.

I love Zimbabwe like no other place and can so fully understand the need to justify ones existence by having a piece of land — which was why the war was fought — or partly anyway. And perhaps that too is part of the problem - that our unflinching loyalty to the land has caused a blinkered attitude to the realities of what and how we are governed. You see, like most of us in the Diaspora, the ‘Zimbabwe’ we think of is romanticised into a nirvana which in fact is not a reality.

Article Author: Ambrose Musiyiwa

Ambrose Musiyiwa has worked as a freelance journalist, book reviewer, and a teacher. One of his short stories has been featured in an anthology of contemporary Zimbabwean writing, Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (Weaver Press, 2005.) He is a regular contributor to OhmyNews International. …

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