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For someone who is usually at the other end of the table, taking down notes while interviewing people, Saulat seemed quite at home as the interviewee this time. Armed with masters’ degrees in English Literature as well as Journalism, she returned to Pakistan in 2001. Having worked as a journalist here and abroad, she understood that to be a writer one has to be really sensitive and feel for others.
  
 
 
 
“One of the schools here offered me a position where I could teach the children how to write. However, I just started with English Literature. Being a part of the school, I started noticing that here, people are inclined towards sending their kids to professional colleges to be doctors, engineers, or to attain a business degree, which is why a lot of good writers in the making weren’t really able to pursue writing, because it was just not an option. I tried to give these young people a platform. We can’t just wait for writers like John Grisham and Dan Brown to emerge.” Coming up with the idea of getting together students who were avid readers and had experience in reading page-turners and mystery books and turning into their mentor, she took them across a journey called ‘a novel experience’. “It was unique because a novel is always written by one person but here we had different individuals make a coherent effort to write a mystery novel.” Reminiscing, she says, “We discussed the plot and did the brainstorming, but then the project stagnated for some time because of their exams and everyone drifted apart. Then I thought of getting them together again. Dur-e- Shahwar was the first one who stuck around, then Rajab joined in.
 
 
 
 
Arsalan and Taha were from the original group. Then at their graduation ceremony I went to Yamna and Hiba. I had six people then who believed in me and I believed in them. But it was very difficult to get these students together as they had gone to different institutes and had different schedules. The reason they stuck around throughout was because it was something unique and they had never done anything like it before.” When discussing the hurdles that they had to face during the writing of the book, she spoke of her disappointment in the publishers who treat multiple authors of one book as one party and the royalty is just a 10% cut. “The youngsters who had put in their heart and soul in the project could have lost motivation and I had compiled and edited this book, we had been in this together, so I knew how good this book was. I really wanted people to buy and read this book which is why I decided to finance this book. I took care of the distribution and the marketing. The reason for doing so was that I want it to have the kind of impact that it deserves because I believe it is unique. It had irony, its twists and action and not for one second can anyone tell that it has been co-authored by so many people. I also realized that the impact of the response that you get for a book is directly related to how much effort you put in marketing. This was a local book written by first-time authors that nobody really knew about. It wasn’t a bestseller coming in from the United States that has everybody waiting for it. If we don’t tell people about it, it will be buried in history,” she adds vehemently. As for her relationship with the students, she goes on to say, “We had a good camaraderie and had an excellent time. I was no longer teaching them when we began this project so it was a very different kind of relationship where the novelty of the project kept us together. I just hope that they are inspired to take this writing experience ahead, individually. I wanted to give them this confidence that they could write and if not now, then later at some point, they will always remember that they once did this and can do it again”. — Sadaf Mahmood