Books and roots (honest, there's a connection)

In the last four days I have read four books, but two stand out. Isabelle Allende’s An Invented Country speaks to me as a writer and as a repat (someone who will most likely never live again in her home country—much more positive than ex-pat which implies running from rather than running to). Besides politically sharing many of my views, which isn’t necessary to make a good read, she speaks of codes in her adopted country. By now I feel comfortable and even love the different codes of Switzerland, but they took a long time to learn and to have them become part of my nature so that anything contrary seems strange and out of place.

The other book was Come Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie, which is non-fiction about her trips to Syria with her archeologist husband. Although Christie has the obnoxious imperialist attitude, my Syrian friend who loaned me the book cautioned me to remember it was pre WWII. If she, as a Syrian wasn’t upset, why should I be? On another level her insights are a treasure of a country I have learned to appreciate and a people I have learned to love.

Both show a writer being in a place cut off from their roots. For those who live outside their home area, I describe it like being a transplanted bush. The first layer of roots are from the home soil, but then the bush grows new and longer roots as it grows up. If you were to cut them back to the original, the plant would not survive, and if you cut out the original roots, the plant would also die. It needs it all.