Thoughts on "Nozizwe and Almahdi"

The next story has hit the stratosphere.

This one, I don't want to say a lot about, because I am seeing that everyone is finding their own little things in it, and I don't want to be that writer who's like, "No no this is what I meant!" or "Well, this is what I saw," and then ruin the reader's reading of it. Or something.

I actually wrote this one for a class assignment for Science Fiction Fairy Tales at The Brainery (Link here, go check it out!). The prompt was the science of love and the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Amore e Psiche (1707–09) by Giuseppe Crespi

As I started thinking of how to combine these two ideas, I kept having this averse reaction to the idea of science making soul mates. The lack of agency in the articles that covered thirty minutes of staring at each other in order to program the brain to empathize/fall in love, and also the erasure of choice for Psyche in the myth both ran against my grain. Of course you can trick your brain into loving someone. But for a character who is intelligent, strong-willed, and wanting something deeper than a trick ... would it work then?

And I realized, while deciding what exactly this story was going to be, that I was so defensive and offended because of something weird that had happened to me.

In 2010, I saw a photograph of a man in a vest, thick curly hair, and big green blue eyes that held galaxies in them. I had no idea what his name was, where he came from, what flavor of cereal he ate growing up, none of it. But I said to my brother, "So I think I saw my soul mate today."

And when I met that man, and I hugged that man, it was like I'd been waiting my whole life to find him again. Whatever the hell that means.

After we were married, he told me he felt that weird feeling, too.

There's something deeper to all this love stuff. Love shouldn't be stressful or forced or forced upon or a scientific formula. It's something I can't explain. It's something I'm not sure an article or a myth can explain.

But we can try. I mean, that's one reason why we write about it, study it, remember it through lore.

Divya poses a very good question at the end of the recording. It's gotten me thinking in a whole new way about this story. And through her question, I realize, as it's now in the world and considered a finished product, I'm only starting to understand this one.



To read or listen "Nozizwe and Almahdi" on Escape Pod,  click here.