Deena ElGenaidi’s debut novel, Dust Settles North, opens in the summer of 2012 and closes in winter 2013. Told from dual perspective, the story follows siblings Zain and Hannah, whose lives unravel after their mother’s untimely death. The two siblings head to Egypt from New York to bury their mother, where they have to deal with little-known relatives on top of their insurmountable grief. Hannah and Zain, both in their twenties, find themselves lost in life. To make meaning out of her grief, Hannah decides to stay in Egypt, while Zain goes back to New York and struggles with substance abuse.
Set against the backdrop of political upheaval and ambiguity in Egypt, Dust Settles North is a story about exploration—of the self, of the truth hiding behind both national and familial secrets, and of discovery. Much like the dusty terrains of Egypt—the home that is not home for Hannah and Zain—their parents’ lives have been dust-ridden, layered by a lifetime of truths unspoken. Zain and Hannah decide to break away from the family legacy of lies and secrets and in doing so, find personal liberation.
ElGenaidi’s storytelling is honest and vulnerable, and she creates a vivid world full of characters who are as real as they are flawed. Throughout Dust Settles North, ElGenaidi tells the story of a family that is on the brink of breaking apart, but through honesty and courage, pulls itself back together.
ElGenaidi has interviewed many authors for Electric Literature, and I was pleased to get the chance to speak with her as an interviewee this time around. Deena and I spoke over Zoom about Egyptian politics, grief as plot, and intentionally othering the English language.
Apoorva Bradshaw-Mittal: This book has grief at its center. The protagonists face such profound grief that it inevitably changes them. Why were you drawn to this kind of grief as a theme for your first novel?
Deena ElGenaidi: The book started off as a short story, and I wanted something big to happen at the beginning that would be the impetus for the characters to move forward and to make the decisions that they make. And you know, something like your mom dying—that’s obviously huge. I didn’t intend going into it for the book to be focused so much on grief. But those were the plot points that I chose. Grief becomes a huge driving force in all their decisions and Hannah’s decision to give up law school and stay in Egypt. And Zain’s life sort of falling apart—all of it is rooted in their grief.
ABM: Another thing that moves the plot is all the rules imposed by their family, culture, and religion that Hannah and Zain must follow. Following the rules dictates whether or not they are good Muslims and good Egyptians. How do you see all these sets of rules driving the stakes even higher?
DE: Well, almost immediately the grief breaks down those rules, and you see the systems starting to crumble. Zain and Hannah have kept all these secrets from their family and from each other to be perceived as good Muslims by their family. But right at the beginning of the story, Hannah decides she’s done keeping those secrets from her brother. So right away we see the rules that they’ve grown up with breaking down. Hannah’s decision to stay in Egypt and give up law school, like I said, that stems from her grief, but it also immediately breaks some of the rules that she has been brought up with. She’s no longer doing things to appease her parents. She’s going off on her own, which, being the girl in the family, is judged a little bit more. Or, they wouldn’t even have allowed [her to] leave the country just by herself. The grief immediately and throughout the story has them breaking all the rules that they follow.
ABM: I agree that from the start both Zain and Hannah break rules in light of their grief. And in another sense, they also follow rules, in that Hannah is following in the footsteps of her mother and Zain is unknowingly following in the footsteps of his father. It’s as if some familial rules and dynamic are still being followed. Son after father, daughter after mother. How does this mirroring define their journey?
DE: That’s an interesting question, because you’re right. They end up following in their parents’ footsteps in some sense, but their parents were also breaking the rules. Zain has this affair and then finds out his dad was also having an affair, which, you know, in any culture, you’re breaking a rule. And Hannah follows in her mom’s footsteps by going to protests and getting involved in organizing and activism. We learn that her mom was in some way breaking the rules as well, because her parents didn’t approve of that. So while they do follow their parents in a certain sense, they’re following the rules that their parents broke.
ABM: You mentioned that grief allows Hannah to leave the US and stay back in Egypt. There is a certain kind of bravery in that. Hannah’s character, to me, is brave, in that decision and also in her everyday choices. The only person she can’t seem to be honest with is Zakaria, the first Egyptian friend she makes in Egypt. Could you talk a little bit about her motivations for being honest with everybody, what it means for her and her personal journey?
The grief immediately and throughout the story has them breaking all the rules.
DE: When Hannah gets to Egypt and starts talking to people and meeting people, she becomes friends with other Americans first. So, she feels a little more comfortable to be herself and be the same person that she was in America to some degree. And then when she meets Zakaria, he, to her, is a personification of the perfect Egyptian Muslim, or a person whose idea she has in her head who maybe doesn’t even exist. It’s just this idealized version of Egypt and the people in Egypt that’s very much based on what her parents told her growing up. They made Egypt seem wholesome and that everyone there followed the rules they were meant to follow. Because he’s the first person that she befriends who’s just Egyptian, has no ties to America, she projects all of that onto him. As a result, it makes her shift her behavior to be the person that her parents perceive her as, or that she would want to be perceived as by someone who is this good Muslim, good Egyptian. And then it turns out that’s not really even who he is. It’s just her projection.
ABM: The framing of the book and the story—it’s quite tight. We start in summer of 2012 and end in winter of 2013. It coincides with the term of Morsi as the president. What’s the significance for you in overlapping the political timeline with the personal one? Could this story exist outside of that political timeline?
DE: The personal narrative of the characters could have existed outside of that timeline, but it would have taken on a different framework for sure. I started writing this in 2015, which is a few years after all of those events in Egypt. It was a time period that I was interested in. I was in Egypt right around that time—either summer 2012 or 2013. I wasn’t there when the protests and the Arab uprising started, which was 2011. So [that’s] the reason I didn’t place it in that time period. While writing, there were moments I wished I did [set it during that time] because it was a little simpler, but I didn’t witness it myself. I was there post these events. What I saw, I found interesting: the way my family moved through Egypt and how people would say, oh, we can’t do certain things because it’s dangerous to be out in certain streets. The power outages that I talk about in the book, those were actually happening, and they would occur at different times every day but would last exactly one hour. This was a way to learn more through the writing.
ABM: In trying to create her identity, Hannah has to justify choosing to be an activist. Her family is worried, but Zain, who is—to put it in a crass way—literally fucking up his life, questions her. Even her friend Vanessa questions her. Why do you think that that’s part of her character, where she is okay with those questions but is also okay justifying herself?
DE: Hannah gives up her spot at law school and at Columbia Law—which, ironic that I chose Columbia, given everything that’s going on right now, but it’s a big deal to get into law school at Columbia. Because of that, I think she felt she has to justify the decision because it’s not one that you can just lightly make. People don’t give up their law school spots at Ivy League universities very often. In Hannah trying to justify all of her decisions, there’s some sense of self-doubt: Did I make the right decision by giving up law school? Did I make the right decision by doing this? And then she tries to do all these different things: go to the square, accompany Vanessa during the journalism she’s working on, and that’s Hannah trying to find her place in Egypt and figure out what is it she wants to do and how she can use her mind and intelligence and be helpful in some way. She’s always trying to justify those decisions, to herself mainly, because she wants to feel that she made the right decision by giving up law school.
In Egypt, English would be the other.
ABM: I want to talk about how Arabic is being used in the book. You do this interesting thing where, to denote that the characters are talking in Arabic and the reader is getting an English translation, you italicize the English. Was that an editing decision or something you wanted to do?
DE: I made a point not to italicize Arabic. I didn’t want [the language] to seem exotic. A lot of the Arabic phrases I have included are turns of phrase used often in Egypt or in other Arab countries. I didn’t want to draw attention to it by italicizing it. I wanted it to just fit in with the rest of the narrative. There are just specific moments where I want the reader to know that this conversation is happening in Arabic, so I will italicize something to show that.
ABM: That’s such an interesting formatting choice because it almost others English in a way that it doesn’t other Arabic in the book, and I love that.
DE: Yeah. In Egypt, English would be the other. So that feels true to the setting.
ABM: You have interviewed Palestinian authors, and I know that you want to highlight Palestine through your literary work. Hannah is doing similar work. At one point, she wants to correct a friend who calls Palestine “Israel”. Did you find yourself giving such characteristics to Hannah that resemble your work as a writer and a critic, or did you want Hannah to be specifically political?
DE: A little bit of both. I wanted to write her in that way. You brought up that line where she wants to correct someone and say, no, it’s Palestine. That line came much later in the story. Because of everything that’s going on now, it was at the forefront of my mind. And I included this to show that this was always going on. It’s not just, you know, after October 7th. I think all of it is related, the activism and the politics and the situation happening in Egypt and what’s going on in Palestine, everything going on in America right now. It’s all connected. And I wanted the characters to show that they understand it.