Through fragments of history, memory, grief and hope, author and psychologist Hala Alyan braids together the story of her life — and the start of another. In I'll Tell You When I'm Home, Alyan writes of her family's exile over the years.
Force or war saw Alyan and her relatives leave their homes in Gaza, Kuwait and Lebanon. Her search for home is framed through years of infertility and later a daughter born via surrogacy.
Alyan, the author of two novels and five poetry collections, spoke with Morning Edition about her debut memoir.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Leila Fadel: Why were you taking stock in this moment and deciding to write the story of your life?
Hala Alyan: Because I felt like my life was untenable as it was, because I felt like I had been sleepwalking for several years and then looked around and saw that I was in the midst of infertility, in the midst of several miscarriages, that I was longing and longing for an experience that I wasn't sure was going to come. The pandemic had started, and I was somebody who had at that point done what I thought were all the "correct things." I had gotten sober many years earlier. I had tackled an eating disorder. I dealt with different traumas that I had. I was successful by metrics of how I taught, I was writing, I was doing all these different things, I had a private practice. And I just could not separate what was happening in my life with what was happening in these places that I belong to and that I came from.
Fadel: Your book is really this journey trying to get pregnant, the many miscarriages, the pain of being angry at your body, and the ultimate decision that you make almost recklessly one night to seek surrogacy. Just talk to me about that moment you made the decision.
Alyan: Yeah, I had just done the D and C [dilation and curettage], which was a procedure to essentially take care of pregnancies that are not going to be able to continue, for the final miscarriage, which was the hardest because it was the one where there had been a heartbeat and I had heard it and it was okay. And then it started to slow, and then there was no heartbeat. I came home and I was still like I had just done anesthesia, I was kind of groggy and whatever. Just before I could even really think of, process what I was doing, I emailed — so I contacted a surrogacy agency months earlier and I just wrote them and was like, I'm ready to go.
Fadel: What was it like for you not to carry [the fetus] yourself?
Alyan: I began the surrogacy process, and then as the months went on, I started to understand the implications, meaning that the first time the baby moved to be like, 'oh, I'm hearing a description of this,' right? I'm hearing the heartbeat through the phone, I'm hearing about the baby moving, I'm hearing about the cravings. I think pregnancy notoriously is like a period of waiting and taking stock, but in my case, it was waiting for something to happen in someone else's body. And that tension started to really echo for me a lot of the metaphors of exile and displacement and what it felt to be a little bit locked out of the experience while also being breathlessly grateful that it was still happening.
Fadel: You call the book I'll Tell You When I'm Home. Where did it come from and did you ever get home?
Alyan: Motherhood has felt very much like a kind of home for me and I've been very grateful for that because I wanted very badly to be a mother. But wanting something is not a guarantee that you'll enjoy it or you'll love it. It's one of the under-discussed things about the human experience, and so I feel particularly grateful that when it arrived, I have loved it. Maybe it's because I'm also solo parenting, but I think there is a profound way in which I feel like I am day to day, architecting this with this little human.
Fadel: You end the book with Leila's birth, tell me what that was like.
Alyan: I had rehearsed also in my mind for years the moment of birthing. I don't know that I would say I was looking forward to it, but I had certainly thought of what it would be like to feel, to have to face that, to have to... and then to be like, 'Oh, in all my rehearsal of life looking one way, this is one of the few times that it never even occurred to me to rehearse this.' And nothing is more beautiful than to show up to your life unrehearsed. And that's exactly what that moment was.
Fadel: Nothing is more beautiful than to show up in your life unrehearsed, I love that. There is a passage near the end of your book, on page 252, do you mind reading that?
Alyan: "In you is the story of sailors, occupiers, the occupied, the people who never left, the people who were made to. You will learn to live within this, as we all do. You come from people that love the way moons pull tides, or else the way that tides are pulled by the moon, and someday you will have to reckon with your own, unruly heart. I have no advice to give, save one thing: Don't exile anything. Turn the sun of your attention — briefly, sometimes briefly — on all that awakens your love.
This is your birthright, Leila. You will have to hunt for many things. Excavate them in others or yourself. But not your mother's truth. I'll leave that right in the open for you to see."
Fadel: You're a few years into parenting, how would you describe the mother you are?
Alyan: You know, shockingly, laid back. Actually, I have a very close friend that was like "you might be the most calm and unanxious parent I've seen." You know, when you pursue something like surrogacy, there is maybe no greater act than trust. By the time she came into the world, I had had to practice that muscle and so I feel more trusting now of the world that I did before her.
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Mansee Khurana. The digital version of this story was edited by Olivia Hampton.
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