Joan Silber on friendship in a broken world

Your story in this week’s issue, “Aman,” is about two childhood friends, Nicole and Yasmina, whose lives diverge, then converge, then diverge again, and it is set against the backdrop of our increasingly fraught political moment. Did any of these items come to you first?

I traveled to Uzbekistan last spring, and before I left I read that Stalin had ordered the evacuation of millions of Soviet citizens to Uzbekistan in the early years of World War II. For example, the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova lived in the capital, Tashkent, for about two years. When I read about families being separated in the chaos of train stations, I knew I wanted to try to use this in a work of fiction. Thinking about a lost little girl, I calculated how old the story needed to be to be contemporary; I brought her to New York (my city), and gave her a family that I can describe. I didn’t know, at first, where the story was going, but I knew I wanted this family to have another encounter with history.

Yasmina and her partner Abdullah are both comedians. Why did you give them this profession?

I was so happy when I invented this. My neighbor does a monthly comedy night at a popular restaurant on the Lower East Side, and I’ve seen the performers she brought in. At first, I set up Yasmina and Abul as comedians just as a way for the two friends to meet each other again, and I actually had the girls make sex jokes to each other as teenagers. But I also knew that something darker was coming in the narrative, and this provided a very unsentimental form of preparation and contrast.

The story is told from Nicole’s point of view, but it hinges on a development in Yasmina’s life. How did you decide to build on this degree of narrative removal?

I needed some removal. For one thing, I’m not Uzbek, and I didn’t feel comfortable using Yasmina’s knowledge; On the other hand, I like for the narrator to observe events from a distance, making guesses and changing assumptions. This degree of distancing also reflects the feeling that is so crucial at the end of the story, the feeling of being in two worlds at the same time. This is my real feeling now. Every day unspeakable things happen around me, and I continue with my normal, enjoyable life.

Yasmina’s family is from Uzbekistan and Abdul’s family is from Bangladesh. Both countries play an important role in the story, and I spent time in each. What inspired those travels, and when did you start thinking about incorporating these places into the story?

I went to Uzbekistan on vacation because I saw photos of stunning Islamic architecture — buildings covered in gold, turquoise and cobalt mosaics — from the country’s Silk Road boom years. The reading I had done beforehand had already made me think of using Stalin’s evacuations in a story, and on my last day, I made sure to see a famous statue in Tashkent of the blacksmith, his wife, and the children they adopted during the war.

She went to Bangladesh in 2022 to teach at the Hermitage Residency for Fiction Writers, run by Bangladeshi-Canadian writer Arif Anwar. We were in Srimangal, deep in the countryside. When I decided I wanted Yasmina to have a partner from a Muslim country, I thought of Bangladesh fondly.

As in “Safety,” close friendship is at the core of your new book, “Compassion.” What attracts you to this type of relationship when writing fiction?

I love writing about friendship, and I’m so happy to be associated with the topic. Romantic love may be the most grounded drama, but friendship has its own difficult continuity and loyalties in the face of a difficult and dangerous world. I chose “Safety” as the title because I kept seeing ironies in the story: Yasmina’s family is drawn to safety in the United States, our government claims that detaining immigrants keeps us safe, and Stalin alienates industries and citizens for their safety. Your question makes me think that for many adults – and certainly for me – friendship is the constant security in our lives. ♦