Writer Paul Alkazraji is guest blogging here today as part of the blog tour celebrating the release of his new book The Migrant. He reveals his journey into writing as well as some of his writing methods…

When I became a believer, just after graduating from Bath University in the late 80s, I wanted to communicate something of the Christian faith to others through writing. Things really began to flourish after I took a correspondence course with the London School of Journalism in Freelance Journalism.

From the mid-90s onwards, I relished the freedom of pursuing the subjects and the people who interested me – drawing out what other believers had to say about their life, faith and work. I very much enjoyed formulating a range of questions, giving people space to talk and then eeking out the gems of their experience for others to appreciate. 

One person I interviewed was the Oscar-winning animator Nick Park. In A Grand Day Out Wallace and Gromit build a rocket in their cellar, and then embark on a holiday to the moon in search of cheese.

The source of his inspiration, Nick told me, was his family’s inventiveness. ‘My parents built this caravan from nothing, just a pair of wheels,’ he said. ‘They built a box on it and decorated it inside with furniture and wallpaper and all seven of us went on holiday to Wales in this thing.’

To the question of whether or not his work is Christian, he replied: ‘The potential for making films is in the creation; I’m just playing a role in that. It’s part of God’s cultural mandate to be creative, and to do things which are pleasing to him. Being constantly challenged by the Gospel to live freer, and creating things in a loving way: I think these are very Christian things to do.’ I thought that was a memorable answer. 

A story that was a turning point for me was when I was invited to Albania in 1998 just before the Kosovo Crisis. We flew to Athens and drove up through the interior of Greece in the summer heat. My colleague felt anxious enough about our safety that he mentioned he’d been on the lookout for a bulletproof vest for me. More than any mild anxiety, I felt an odd affirmation that I was entering the zone of true reporting if such a thing were necessary.

As we drew near to the Albanian border and asked for directions, several people looked at us as if we were crazy, making the gesture of firing off rifles above our heads and shouting, ‘Pam, pam, pam!’ The country had only recently emerged from a phase of violent chaos. But as things transpired, we were untouched and unthreatened throughout our week in Albania.

The story, about a missionary couple, made a great feature forThe Christian Herald, and two years later I returned for five weeks to write the couple’s biography, Christ and the Kalashnikov, for HarperCollins.

In one incident in the book, a knock came on the missionary couple’s hotel door late one night as Albania was beginning to open up and break apart. Feeling very apprehensive, they were led to a stone cottage in the city’s old quarter dimly lit with a single light bulb and a candle. There they met a handful of old men who were the only remaining members of a church started before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Their leader spoke: ‘He says that they have kept their faith secretly for over fifty years, and word reached him today that the Gospel had been preached on the streets of his town for the first time since the Communists took control. He has been praying for this day for years. He says that he is ready now to die with contentment… They were the youth group,’ the translator said. Writing can sometimes lead you to feeling you’ve been given a little piece of history to record. 

One of the ways I worked on my first novel The Silencer, which I wrote after living in Albania for a decade, was to do close observation work in the places where the story is set. The Silenceropens with the main character, Jude Kilburn, sitting in a taxi-van as it speeds along an Albanian mountain road. I rode the very route several times, noting down visual details, and also trying to be hyper-conscious with all my senses.It’s quite draining, but the results, I hope, can be quite immersive for the reader. 

‘Whitewashed, stone walls, holding back the mountain dirt behind them, streamed past stencilled with logos and sprayed with graffiti: ‘Albanian Exhausts’, ‘Geri’, ‘LSI’… Then came a café plastered with Nescafe posters, a man selling ice cream from a scratched refrigerator, and an old man bobbing side-saddle on a mule laden with white sacks, flicking its rump with a stick…’ Chapter 1 The Silencer 

On the way to Athens doing research for my new novel The Migrant, I used audio notes, the video mode on a phone, a traditional journalist’s notebook, and collected seemingly inconsequential memorabilia like subway-tickets to help add those ‘apt particularities’ later that bring a place to life with authenticity. 

The Migrant is about Jude Kilburn, a pastor now, who takes on the responsibility to care enough for another person in his village, a young man, Alban, that he is ready to go the extra kilometre, over 500 of them in fact, to Athens to see if he is safe.

The reader is taken on an adventure into Greece, arriving in the capital as far right political groups march through the streets and anarchists clash with riot police. 

‘Jude turned back and ran. A nausea rose up from his stomach to his throat and his hands prickled with pins. He saw the amphitheatre of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus shaking below him on his left as he pounded along, and then, through the haze of smog and the water in his eyes, the vast rubble of buildings that was Athens.’ Chapter 16 The Migrant

It is a story about someone struggling with what his pastoral responsibility should be, and how far, like ‘The Good Shepherd’, he should go for that one sheep who wanders off. I have met many young men in Albania who have, in reality, made similar adventurous journeys into Greece in search of work, and returned to tell their stories of danger, of some financial success, but also of disappointment. 

There is redemption in The Migrant, as that is so centrally a part of my own worldview as a follower of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit assists the characters at crucial moments. As Jude searches for Alban on the Acropolis, he remembers the words of an old Demis Roussos song: ’My friend the wind…he tells me a secret.’ The secret is that Alban is very close by on Mars Hill. But can Jude get to him in time? Well, that secret, I’m afraid, is kept hidden in the pages of the novel. 

Paul Alkazraji worked as a freelance journalist in the UK from the mid-nineties. His articles were published in many Christian magazines, while his travel articles were also published in The Independent. His first book, Love Changes Everything, a collection of testimonies, was published by Scripture Union in 2001. His second book, Heart of a Hooligan, was published by Highland Books in 2000. His third book, Christ and the Kalashnikov, was published by Harper Collins in 2001. 

From 2004 to 2010 Paul was editor and publisher of Ujëvarë magazine in Albania. His thriller, The Silencer, was published by Highland Books in 2012. His new novel, The Migrant, was published by Instant Apostle in February 2019. You can read the first chapter for free here. Buy the full book here.