Completing Tasburai
25-08-2021
Hi, this is Rehan. Welcome to this month’s update. I spent a lot of the month in the UK, having travelled there from Spain where we were doing a permaculture course. Andalusia, which is southern Spain was hot, though up in the mountains the weather was very nice. Coming to London, well it was as you’d expect, wet and cold. But it makes a big change from Dubai, where it’s about 40 degrees at the moment, so I actually welcomed the grey clouds, the drizzly rain and definitely appreciated the tremendous greenery in rural areas.
Whilst in the UK I had the opportunity to visit many historic places, but was most taken by my trip to two places. Firstly, the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey. It was built in in 1889 by the Hungarian-British Orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, who was born into a Jewish family. It was funded by Sultan Shah Jahan, who was the Begum of Bhopal, so a Muslim businesswoman. And it was designed by a Christian architect William Isaac Chambers. What a wonderful story reflecting the coming together of very different peoples and beliefs for the purpose of creating a place of worship. If you haven’t visited, it’s well worth a trip.
And the second place that remains in my memory is a trip to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. The cemetery, which was at one time the largest in Europe, is spread across a beautiful green landscape, full of mature trees, shrubs and plants. It houses the graves of many deceased from the Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian and Muslim faiths. It also has the graves of some very eminent individuals. I particularly remember seeing the grave stone of Marmaduke Pickthall who was born in 1875. At Harrow he was a classmate and friend of Winston Churchill. He went on to become a well-known novelist, science fiction writer and contemporary of H G Wells, D H Lawrence and E M Foster. He was also one of the early English converts to Islam and later completed an acclaimed translation of the Quran from Arabic to English. He travelled to many places in the East, and I think his life would make a really great biography for someone prepared to write it.
Talking about writing, I also took the month to think through a story which has been hanging around for a couple of years now. As you know, Last of the Tasburai was my first published novel and Scream of the Tasburai followed soon afterwards. The third and final novel in the Tasburai series, Legends of the Tasburai, is in first draft stage, which means there is still a lot of work to be done. However, before I set off on a new series, I’ve made the intention to finish the Tasburai series off. A lot of readers keep asking me about when the last Tasburai novel is coming out. I’m aiming for the start of 2022, or earlier if that is possible!
Finally, I was pleased to see that A Demon’s Touch the final novel in the Chronicles of Will Ryde and Awa Maryam Al Jameel, is now listed on Amazon. Always a good sign. If you haven’t read the first two in the series, now is the time to do so. The books are available directly from the publisher, HopeRoad, or any local bookshop, or any online channel such as Amazon. As always if you have any questions about any of my books, or you have any questions about writing, then drop me a note and I will do my best to come back to you. Bye for now and peace be upon you.
