Just finished drafting Chapter Eight, in which we meet the Imam Bachir Tarraf, brother of Hanan Tarraf, the father of Khalid, the young man who killed himself and seventeen others in a suicide bombing in Chapter One. Bachir will play a pivotal, but as yet undetermined, role in the conspiracy that is starting to shape up in the story. In this introduction, we learn that he is haunted by his memories of the 1982 massacres at the East Beirut camps at Sabra and Shatila, during which time he served as Imam of the mosque in the camps. Hundreds (some say thousands) of refugees were massacred on the night of September 16th, and he was spared only because of his position. He will be a fun character to play around with, particularly as regards his interactions with the Rabbi Aryeh Balshemnik and the Cressey family.
So far this novel, in its first 130 pages, has 5 distinct and seemingly unrelated plot threads. The challenge now becomes converging them together in a coherent and compelling manner. Yikes….