Today is a momentous day for Write Now! with Jon Tattrie: our first full production run of a book. Before, I spoke with hope; now I speak with knowledge: I can create a full book, from the first words to the last printed page. Tell me your book dreams and I will make them come true.
Forged In Two Lands began with a short message about two years ago. Besim Halef’s daughter reached out and asked if I could help them preserve their father’s inspiring life story on the page. I had heard Mr. Halef’s name many times as a prominent developer, but had never met or spoke to him. I met him at his Halifax office and found him to be a fascinating person. I had not then heard of Midyat, Turkey, but would come to know it like an ancestral home. Mr. Halef was born there into a world that seemed centuries away from the office I met him in.
Mr. Halef speaks Aramaic, Kurdish, Turkish, German and English, and brought me in to turn his oral memories into an autobiography. We worked closely for more than a year to do that, resulting in a powerful book about a truly Canadian dream: arriving with $30 in the 1970s knowing not a soul, and taking that opportunity to build a business empire. He also built something of greater value, which forms the heart of the book: family. Two of the chapters are told by Nadia Halef, his wife, and bring a brand-new perspective to Canadian books – that of a Syrian Christian girl who left HER home at 16 to marry a Turkish-Canadian man she had just met.
The Halefs are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this year, and we made sure the first 100-book print run was ready for the celebration.
For me, it was a great privilege to work with the Halef family to tell this utterly compelling and unique account of a life. They believed in me, even when I wasn’t sure I believed in myself. I learned how to create the interior design of a book, how to artfully include family photos, how to create a cover, and then all the steps toward building a physical, hard-cover book. (It’s also available as an ebook.)
I put a public-facing version for sale on Amazon, the biggest book retailer on Earth, and ordered a private print run of 100 books for friends and family.
It’s an old question: what do you get the person who has “everything?” The one thing they do not have: their own book, securing their legacy. These beautiful, high-quality books will be passed down through the generations, and even a 100 years from now, his descendents will be able to open the exact same book and read his life story, in his own words.
It’s a whole new way of making books. It is not designed to leap off the bookshelves, nor to sell lots of copies. It’s an original, a book made for the oldest and best reasons: a love of literature, and a gift of a life shared.