Lyn Pickering

The civil war in Lebanon and the invasion by Israel had a great impact on me as I had left Lebanon only a short time before. My brother and I hitchhiked from London to Beirut in the early ’70’s and fell in love with the Middle East. Lebanon is an amazing country; dramatic, beautiful, and rich in history. At that time tourism was not at a great height – at least not in the mountain areas where we lived, and the people were warm and hospitable. We stayed in a village called Shimlan, below us were silver/green olive groves and way beyond, Beirut lay like pink coral with one arm reaching out in the Mediterranean Sea.

I left the Middle East behind reluctantly, made a bit of money as a waitress in London and travelled back to South Africa with a small group overland. At this stage, I was writing only poetry and a shaky travelogue dictated by the rough terrain.

My first novel was called The Single Leaf, from a poem by the Lebanese writer, Khalil Gibran; it grew as I watched from a distance, a land engaged in a death struggle.
This was still the days of typewriters and my final draft, when completed, was sent without making a copy, to publisher in Lebanon. It was never heard of again. I had earlier copies which I buried in a bottom drawer and left there along with my dreams of a writing career.

No writer can be buried forever and I began work on Opus Dei a few years later. Nimrod Twice Born developed in parallel, the two books taking more than 30 years to the point of publication. By contrast, Betrayal of Fools took a mere seven months to write!