Lost in history

Arena Qatar Arts and Letters

Lost in History The Doha-based author Kate Lord Brown talks about her new book and her eternal thirst for untold stories from the past.

BY AYSWARYA MURTHY

STORY STATION Brown's writing nook in her home in Doha.

THERE ARE SOME OF US WHO FEEL OUT OF PLACE IN OUR OWN TIME; constantly at the mercy of a bittersweet pull that keeps dragging us back to a certain age and place. It doesn’t take much to figure out that Kate Lord Brown is one such kindred soul. Maybe it’s because her last two novels, and her two upcoming ones, are set around World War II. Maybe even because she still writes all her stories by hand first. (“The connection between your head, hand and the paper gives the work a different quality, I think,” she says.) But mostly it just shows in how she has rediscovered unremembered elements of a history so recent. It’s amazing how much we forget, she says.

She credits her love of that particular period of history to her great aunt Rose, who would keep the young Kate transfixed with stories of her days in occupied Holland.

“Rose would tell me about the Resistance and how she helped hide her Dutch husband from the Nazis, thus saving his life. So for me, the name Rose always had a heroic connotation,” she says. One of the central characters in Brown’s most recent book, “The Perfume Garden,” is named Rosa in her great-aunt's honor. Descended from the gypsies of Granada, the fictional Rosa’s story unfolds in Valencia, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Several decades later, nestled amidst its orange groves and neroli blossoms, Brown would carefully chalk out the dramatic

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events of Rosa’s life. Valencia might not have been where it all began — for Brown, for Rosa or for the war — but it forms the backdrop of a decisive period in their stories.

“The Perfume Garden” shuttles between two timelines as it tells the story of perfumer and expectant mother Emma Temple who, in search of a new start, finds herself standing outside a dilapidated house in Valencia, a gift from her mother after her recent death. Its garden, overrun with weeds, echoes of a secret past. Intertwined with this is the story of Rosa and her days in the house. The book was inspired by Kate’s sojourn in Valencia, during which she came to realize that Spain had, almost too steadfastly, stood by its Pact of Forgetting. With the country's peaceful march of progress demanding the burial of its hurtful civil war memories, powerful stories of bravery, passion and sacrifice were being relegated into obscurity.

“I found that even the young people there didn’t want to talk about the war and it sparked the tale for me,” she says.

The effort to uncover the annals of local history brought up heartbreaking and seldom discussed accounts of the massacres, the international brigades and the evacuation of children. “I spoke to people who had experienced the war or were fighting to discover the truth about what happened and remember those times — from the general history to tiny details that brought the story to life,” Brown says.

“Eventually I had to force myself to stop the research and start the book.”

The Spanish Civil War, which in many people’s imagination was the first true chance to fight fascism in Europe, attracted legions of foreign fighters — men and

CANONS FROM CATALONIA Clockwise from top: Kate's second novel, "The Perfume Garden"; Valencia, and its recent history, served as the setting and inspiration for the story; the city during the festival of Las Fallas.

IMAGES COURTESY OF KATE LORD BROWN

The Perfume Garden was inspired by Kate’s sojourn in Valencia, during which she came to realize that Spain had, almost too steadfastly, stood by its Pact of Forgetting. women from countries that didn’t even share borders with Spain, but for whom the fight was personal. Thinkers and artists gravitated toward this visceral struggle — Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda, Robert Capa, Greda Taro, Pablo Picasso, Federico García Lorca — each crafting the narrative of the war through a unique prism, be it prose, poetry, painting or photography. And Brown gives us tantalizing glimpses of some of them. It’s tricky, intertwining the lives of these very real people into those of the book’s fictional characters, she says.

Hemingway, whose time in the civil war is well documented, was an easy target, so she steered clear of him except in a passing reference. Celebrated war photographers Robert Capa and Greda Taro, however, make significant appearances in the book. “Capa is charismatic and mysterious, more of a challenge to bring alive in the pages. It was even more so with Taro, his often underappreciated partner and lover,” Brown says. “ I worked with archives in America that housed voice recordings and memoirs he left behind of his war experiences. It was fun to catch some of the unique

mannerisms in the way he talked and expressed himself and use those in the book.

“I also wanted to weave in a modern day story so that it wasn’t all terribly sad and there was some redemption at the end of it,” she says. And with Spain being so rich with fragrances — from the orange blossoms in the fields to the incense in the churches — the perfumer’s angle was a natural, light and engaging way to balance out the war story. “I have always been fascinated by perfumes and the magical way scents can carry you back in time. Rose loved perfumes, too,” Brown smiles. This absorbing leg of her research was helped along immensely by biophysicist and fragrance expert Luca Turin, as well as the artisanal perfume-makers she spoke to. “In the book, Emma sells up her successful perfume company and goes back to grassroots, creating perfumes on her perfumer’s organ in her kitchen. So I was keen to speak to people who work on that small scale rather than the conglomerates,” she says.

It’s an esoteric discipline, perfumery. It involves creating a scent based on nothing but vague, poetic ideas of what feelings and imagery the smell is meant to evoke. Does it

May - June 2015

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later to Doha.

When talking to Brown, it’s intriguing to see how each of her books ties into a different aspect of her life — like a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. The inspiration of her fourth book, “The House of Dreams,” stems from her time as an art history major. In the course of doing the research for her thesis, one name kept popping up in the context of some of the contemporary artists of the World War II era: Varian Fry. “An American journalist, Fry volunteered to travel to Marseille and managed the rescue of over 2,000 artists, writers and intellectuals in danger from the Nazis, getting them to safety in America. He is called the artist’s Schindler,” she says. Brown had always wanted investigate his life further. “He was like an angel on my shoulder saying: Come on, write about me,” she smiles. And eventually, she did. Fry was a hard character to write about, Brown says, because he was such an enigma, even to his friends in real life. “But I was lucky enough to track down a professor in Bard College, who as teenager, was the

Kate Lord Brown was an art curator who used to put together collections for embassies.

look like autumn? Can it conjure up the feeling of a midsummer shower on your skin? Does it sound like your favorite part of town from ten years ago? Does it smell like Danger Red? Can it remind you of a story that had once been beyond recall? The perfumer sits in front of the organ and composes the scent from the many hundreds of notes at his or her disposal. And like Brown says in the book, it might take many years before you get it right.

An art curator turned full-time author, Brown will have published four books in as many years come 2016 — many of which she started writing in Valencia, continued in London and completed in Doha. Her debut novel, “The Beauty Chorus,” also focuses on an obscure World War II story: the female pilots who served in Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, flying new and repaired or damaged aircrafts between factories and active airfields. At one point there were 168 women in the unit who made up one eight of all the ATA pilots. While these women enjoyed a lot of attention in their day, they have been all but forgotten today. Brown’s interest in the subject was sparked when she chanced upon an obituary for one of these women when she was doing her recycling one day. “I realized I didn’t even know there were women doing these jobs during the war,” she says. The story doubly resonated with her because it was around this time that Brown’s husband made a spontaneous, life-altering decision to embark on a career as a pilot, which led to their move to Valencia, and

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youngest member of Fry’s team in France. He is the last person alive today who was there and experienced the story. A refugee himself, he ended up working for Fry, witness to many incredible stories of bravery.” A lot of latenight Skype conversations later, Brown was ready to tell his tale.

For Brown the whole of the 20th century is an unending source of material, a time of dramatic change, that still harbors a few secrets. “I am never going to have enough time to write about everything I want to,” she confesses.

And it’s important to her that these stories be told. “We can’t forget. Only if we continue to remember can we prevent history from repeating itself.” So while the public waits to read “The House of Dreams,” which is due to be out next year, it can occupy itself with Brown’s third novel, “The Christmas We Met,” which spans the years between World War I and the 1970s, tracing the journey of a priceless missing tiara, as it recounts the turbulent history of the world and one family in particular. “It’s due to be published later this year and the story begins and ends at Christmas time. Hopefully it will appeal as much to historic fiction buffs as it does to those who enjoy a good love story,” she says.

“I think I’m interested in love, in its purest sense,” Brown says when asked about the emotion so central to her books. “I like exploring what it makes people do and become. So it’s not just romantic love between a couple, but love for family, friends, country and ideas. “The Perfume Garden,” for example, has several romantic love stories but it is mainly about maternal love.” After our meeting, Brown presumably goes back to her desk at home, to think about love and war, waiting for the slightest idea that will spark her next book. Maybe, hidden in the rugged beauty of Qatar’s deserts, among the rich mix of people from different backgrounds, and in delicious strain between the rush of progress and a staunch cultural grounding, there lies a secret story that only she can earth out.

IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT ALTAMIRANO

For Brown the whole of the 20th century is an unending source of material, a time of dramatic change, that still harbors a few secrets.