Just Another Life is a story full of real conversations about things that matter, told through a young woman rebuilding her life in her war-torn country. May Bahar was gifted, far beyond ordinary, but fate doesn’t care about our talents. Like everyone else, May was a victim and a beneficiary of where and when she was born, and of every person she met along the way. But she must have done something good in her life since what she considers her greatest failure turns into her greatest joy.
May and her friends care about the world the way many of us do. They talk about it regularly, but they never think to do anything (this is what I like to call ‘passive activism’) because what could they do, they are just ordinary people trying to make the best of things. If it sounds familiar so far, this book is for you.
This story is written from the future about the present, because only the future would think to ask those important questions. Besides, we had to assume that some kind of catastrophe in the world (that many expect) has happened, and that May’s generation was being blamed for it, blamed for not preventing it. Whether we like to accept it or not, if there is some kind of catastrophe in the world, the future generations will blame us for it. So, that is not an unrealistic assumption. The protagonist, as well as the reader, are left with the question: what the characters should have done to keep the world evolving rather than destroying itself?
I wrote this book to pay homage to dialogue. As an activist, I’ve had the pleasure to hear some of the most fascinating stories, thoughts, ideas, and views. I’ve had the honour to meet all kinds of people and communities. I’ve used a lot of that in this book. So the book breaks some rules. Apparently, literature is not about real life. But also, literature is about the truth. Real life is the truth. So… Plus, considering the
popularity of reality TV, maybe we need to do more to make literature about real life? I’m taking a shot here, to see if people agree.
May, the protagonist, is unique in many ways (wait until you find out about her father), and yet she’s also as ordinary as any person you might meet in your local café, pub or shop. Hence, the title of the book. The title of the story is somewhere between ‘there is no such thing as just another life’ and ‘we expect too much from our ordinary, little lives’.
