“This story may be one of the most autobiographical pieces I’ve written,” Jamil Jan Kochai says, about his short story in this week’s issue.
. In this story, we follow the life of the father, which is narrated in the form of a résumé. What made you decide to tell the story in this way?
Do you intend the formal structure to, in a sense, protect the reader from the emotion of the story or to make that emotion more powerful? The character whose résumé this is faces challenge after challenge, from fighting for his own education, to coping with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, losing his brother and sister, getting the rest of his family to safety in a refugee camp in Pakistan, and then re-starting life in the U.S., where he works a series of menial jobs in order to support his wife and children.
This story may be one of the most autobiographical pieces I’ve written. Much of my research for it consisted of me asking my father about the different jobs he’d held in his life. That was my jumping-off point for most of the sections. From there, I fictionalized many of the specific details and actions, and the responses to the different forms of labor. What’s funny is that my father’s work history is actually more harrowing and incredible than what’s depicted in this story.