INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR IRMA FRITZ

BIOGRAPHY

Irma grew up in a German town whose name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce. She studied writing at California State University at Los Angeles and worked at Hollywood PR agencies. As a young press agent, she interacted with several celebrities, including Neil Diamon, Dick Van Dyck, and Henry Mancini. She even witnessed James Stewart’s grand entrance as he rode in on an elephant at an L.A. Zoo fundraiser.

Irma bicycled across the U.S. and lived in the Canadian bush country. Her serendipitous life journey took her to Seattle where she worked in administration and human resources. Then a friend tricked her into a date with the handsome, young man who became her husband.

Her published works are: Dear Sugar & Other Sorrows, a collection of short stories; and the novels Confessions of a Predatory Lender, The Season of Singing, and When There Was No Moon. The latter won first place in a Pacific Northwest Writers Association Unpublished Literary Novel Contest. When There Was No Moon is now a finalist in PNWA's Nancy Pearl Contest for best book-fiction. Irma's new work-in-progress is a novel set in a medieval hill town of Sicily.

LYNN: In your latest book "When There Was No Moon," how did you decide to write about honor killings in Pakistan?

IRMA: All too often we writers wish that the Greek Muses were not a myth. Left without magical creatures, we draw inspiration from what we see, experience, and read. In the case of When There Was No Moon, it was a newspaper article about an honor killing in Pakistan that caught my attention. A young pregnant woman was stoned to death in broad daylight by her clansmen. Her crime? She’d married the man she loved instead of the cousin her father had chosen for her.

I only had a few facts, but I thought if I could invent a life for this woman—a name, a face, a place where she grew up, and what her dreams were as a girl—it would fit into my book of short stories I was writing. And so, I began to research honor killing. The more I read, the more I realized that this topic was much too big and much too important for a short story.

This needed to be a novel!

When I told my critique partners my plan to write about a country I’d never visited and about characters whose religion was not my own, they told me I was crazy. But by that time, I’d read of too many cases of girls and women killed by a father, a cousin, an uncle. I was hooked and decided to take on the challenge. And that’s how When There Was No Moon was born.

LYNN: How did you research honor killings?

Irma: My research took on many forms. The internet was an immense help, especially Quora Pakistan and the people I met there. So were online Pakistani newspapers, publications like Dawn, the largest English language newspaper in Pakistan; The Express Tribune, Pakistan’s only internationally affiliated newspaper in partnership with the International New York Times; Daily Pakistan published from Lahore, Punjab, the province where my story is set; Pakistan Observer, one of the oldest and widely read English newspapers.

I read these papers and online postings not only for stories of honor killing but for food, lifestyle, fashion, education, world news from a Pakistani viewpoint, religious observances, etc.

Soon enough, my protagonist, Samina, living in the small Pakistani village of Khusa, came to life in my imagination along with this question: Can a girl who wants to know the world beyond her courtyard walls survive in a country where violence against women is as common as the daily calls to prayer? I also felt that Samina’s benefactor and lover, Nasir, had his own story to tell. Therefore, I structured this novel in alternating first-person chapters from both of their viewpoints.

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HONOR KILLINGS happen in many countries. In cases when the victim is a family member, the murder evolves from the perpetrators' perception that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the entire family, which could lead to social ostracizing, by violating the moral norms of a community. 

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LYNN: Since the book is set in another country, how did you research the intricacies of that culture to achieve such authenticity?

IRMA: I wanted so much to visit Lahore and the Punjabi villages — the setting for my novel — to meet the people, to dance at the festivals, and to eat the food. I’d made online contact with a Lahore architecture student, Shanaseeb, who invited me to stay with him and his extended family. However, anti-American sentiment had steadily grown since the Osama bin Laden killing in 2011, and our State Department advised against travel.

So, I immersed myself in Pakistani culture, customs, religion, and food while I respectfully researched and wrote for about four years. While working on the book, I kept in close contact with Shanaseeb and other Pakistanis on Quora. I learned quickly that honor killing is a sensitive topic in Pakistan, especially with Muslim men.

I “shopped” at bazaars in Lahore and “walked” its city streets. I read menus from local restaurants, “prepared” tea with Lahori chai wallahs, and “ground” sugar cane for juice with street vendors. I “traveled” with the food vlogger and travel writer Mark Wiens to Punjabi villages, where I watched mouthwatering Punjabi dishes being prepared on fires out in the open.

Since my story is set in a farming community, I learned about farming and animal husbandry in Pakistani’s Punjab region. I created crop charts and weather charts, tracked those lunar festival days over the ten-year span of my novel, and so much more.

LYNN: What was your goal for the reader? How did you want them to feel at the end?

IRMA: About 70% of Pakistani marriages are arranged by fathers without the consent of their daughters. If a girl disobeys or commits other acts judged dishonorable, the men kill her to uphold the clan's honor. The United Nations estimates that about 5,000 honor killings take place each year worldwide, with most of the cases happening in Pakistan.

My novel is not meant to accuse Islam, only those who clothe their inhumanity in its mantle. Along with Judaism and Christianity, Islam is among the three Abrahamic religions. The Quran forbids forced marriages and instructs fathers to obtain consent from their daughters.

These days, as more people in our own country espouse the viewpoint of ultra-conservative Christianity, exerting control over women is not a Pakistani issue alone. Once we stop advocating for the separation of church and state, we will no longer be the democracy our forefathers created, but a theocratic state not unlike the world of When There Was No Moon.

Most of all, what I hope my readers find in this book is what I found: kinship with those strangers in that strange land I never got to visit and an understanding of religion not my own. Does it matter if the story is set in Verona, Italy, or Khusa, Pakistan, that the warring parties aren’t named Capulet or Montague? Are not Samina and Nasir in When There Was No Moon Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, a woman and a man daring to love whom they love and wishing to forge their destinies?

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"Imagine what it means in Jordan, where women who are raped are considered to have compromised their families’ honor. Fathers, brothers, and sons see it as their duty to avenge the offense, not by persuing the perpetrators but by murdering the victims; their own daughters, sisters, and mothers." -- Interview by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo with Rana Husseini, feminist & human rights defender

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LYNN: Besides your award, what kind of feedback have you received on this book?

IRMA: I was so lucky to find Aneela Iftikar, my Pakistani beta/sensitivity reader, who lives in Punjab province where my novel is set. She evaluated my manuscript for cultural and religious issues and approved of what I had written. Here are some of her comments:

“This story has thrill, drama, suspense, cruelty, romance and passion. You have chosen a very sensitive issue of Pakistan. The forced marriages, the honor killing, the negation of basic human rights of women. In the villages and backward areas young girls are still not allowed to attend schools. I really liked the way you know each and every thing about our culture and cities. And the epilogue stole my heart. There is no honor in killing… I really don’t have words to appreciate you about how beautiful the end is.”

Here are excerpts from reviews I received after publication:

“I just finished this book about 5 minutes ago and my insides are reeling… I would warn readers that you need to be prepared to have your heart rejoicing one minute and shattering the next.… It’s a tale as old as time and as fresh as today’s headlines and, sadly, not one restricted to rural Pakistan where the story is set…This is a story that touches upon tenderness, culture, love, sensuality, violence, rules, boundaries, family, and community… The powerful emotional intensity delighted and deeply moved me at the end, so much so that I feared accidentally tearing the last few pages.”

BONUS QUESTION

LYNN: As a fan of true crime stories, I am always interested in how the investigators are affected by the crimes and the perpetrators. Here, you were the investigator, so I’m curious how you felt by the time you finished the novel. What kind of lasting effect did the experience have on you?

IRMA: After completing a story, I go through a time of mourning and often quote Truman Capote, who said, "Finishing a book is like you took a child out in the backyard and shot it."

The characters in my novel are still so real to me that I can’t let them go. I wake every morning to check the weather and news for the fictional village of Khusa, Pakistan, where my novel is set.

Today the temperature in Khusa is 103˚. The air is heavy with moisture during this July monsoon season. Clouds hide the first-quarter moon. Soon thunderstorms will bring the rain that drenches the parched soil and fills the dry canals with needed water for rice and wheat fields. Khusa farmers will have an abundant harvest this year. Inshallah!

I fell in love with Punjab, this beautiful province Pakistanis call The Land of Five Rivers. I would have preferred to craft a story of Khusa families living in harmony. But When There Was No Moon was inspired by true crime stories of women’s murderers going unpunished.

Girls and women experience male violence at an ever-increasing rate, not only in Pakistan but in our own country. As women dare to insist on self-determination, men continue to abuse them, often without punishment. This systematic injustice is the reason I keep Samina and Nasir, and all the characters I created, locked in my heart.

While there is no honor in killing, there is honor in shining a light on femicide.

LYNN: Wow, I understand completely. Since I write two mystery series with different characters, I miss them if I'm not writing about them. They become like family. Irma, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. You did an outstanding job with a truly difficult subject.

Here's a link to Irma's book "When There Was No Moon" on Amazon: 

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