Well, let’s just say that I have committed a portion of the proceeds of this book to go to my friends in the village. At the end of the book, Pat criticizes Theresa for wanting to save the world and assume long-term responsibility for her Kurdish friends.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I wanted to do whatever I could to protect future generations of Kurdish girls from FGM. Thus, I was hesitant to write anything that might endanger their cause. And it looked possible that there might even be a chance for Kurdish independence, if only in Northern Iraq.

At the time of publication, mid-2016, the Kurds had been getting a lot of good press from the West, given their heroics in fighting ISIS. This was especially true given the current political situation. At the same time, I didn’t want to embarrass my Kurdish friends, or make them look backwards to the outside world. I wanted to raise awareness about FGM, because most of the world doesn’t realize that it is still practiced in Kurdistan. It’s something that women there don’t talk about, yet which is an integral part of their cultural identity. The biggest was around the issue of female genital mutilation, FGM. Did you face any ethical challenges while writing the book? Suddenly, I was writing fiction, and the whole project transformed. Then, to my surprise, the characters started acting on their own, saying things and making decisions that their real counterparts had not. But I had too many people for the reader to keep track of, and had to meld many characters together. They started out being real, because this began as a memoir, not a novel. I had to rearrange timing quite a bit to get everything to fit. Many of incidents really happened, if not to me then to people I knew, although not necessarily during my stay in Kurdistan.

I wanted the outside world to have a glimpse of Kurdish culture, and hopefully come to love and respect it as much as I do. My goal was to include as many true incidents as possible, without endangering any of my friends, or compromising confidentiality agreements with my employer. Suddenly, I could see how to tell the villagers’ stories from a teacher’s viewpoint. Her comment gave me a zap of inspiration.

One day, the person who inspired Pat’s character said, “I’d really like to read a book about what happened to those friends of yours in the village.” I’d been grappling with how to start writing about my experiences in Kurdish Iraq. Interview with the Author Where did you get the idea for The Kurdish Bike? Born in Carmel, California, she now lives in Santa Cruz, where she loves to boogie board and (of course) ride a bicycle. Alesa Lightbourne has been an English professor and teacher in six countries, lived on a sailboat, dined with Bedouins, and written for Fortune 50 companies.

The Kurdish Bike by Alesa Lightbourne