The first days of January tempt us to pivot between past and future. As we begin to come back to our routines and think about where we want to go to, we also pause to recall where we’ve been. At the end of 2018 we lost Amos Oz. Thankfully, WBFO took the time to sit down with him in 2011 when Oz was a guest at BABEL.
Arriving in Buffalo, Hamid said, felt in a way like coming home. Upon taking the stage he made note of the parallels between Buffalo and his native Lahore, cities whose best days are thought to be behind them and yet suddenly seem to have more to look forward to than others proclaimed. From the beginning, Hamid established himself as a “familiar stranger”, and the rest of his talk he spent telling that we all share that identity. For almost two hours, Hamid engaged the audience with anecdotes of his own personal history, the rationale behind the use of portals in his novel, the portals we use in real life, and the commitment to the use of imagination in adult life.
Do you have any second parts in your life? Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Points of Departure (see WBFO's coverage here) opened with the above question posed by Bishnu Adhikari. It was question that did not require a response but demanded some thought, much like everything else that morning.