Syed M. Masood, THE BAD MUSLIM DISCOUNT: A Novel
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[0:58]Sied Masud is the author of the bad Muslim discount a novel
[1:03]He grew up in Karachi, Pakistan a first generation immigrant twice over
[1:07]He has been the citizen of three different countries and nine different cities
[1:11]He currently lives in Sacramento, California where he is a practicing attorney
[1:14]Welcome Sied. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss bad Muslim discount and everything else about your life
[1:24]Thank you for having me. I appreciate it
[1:26]Okay, so heads up to readers you will encounter a very interesting
[1:32]Opening with lots of blood spurting everywhere and animal sacrifice and who knows what you're getting into tell us and actually
[1:39]Well, I'll tell you that later tell listeners what your book is about and what inspired it for you
[1:46]Sure, the bad Muslim discount is story about two different young people
[1:50]It starts when they're very young when they're kids and goes into their thirties and their journeys from
[1:55]various parts of the Muslim world to
[1:58]United States basically the process of becoming American and
[2:02]It charts two very different journeys because I wanted to show the different ways that people come here and the different lives that people do live
[2:09]And even if sometimes they're sort of treated as a monolith and you know the book is really about the idea of belonging
[2:16]You know, it's the idea of
[2:18]The question of what happens when you feel like you belong to a country that doesn't want you or at least some
[2:24]Elements in the country don't want you what happens if you belong to a religion doesn't that doesn't want you or there
[2:31]People and the religion who don't want you what happens if you belong to a family that doesn't want you and so that really was the driving
[2:37]Question behind the book. Um, so yeah
[2:39]Interesting which pieces of that what where do you not feel like you belonged?
[2:45]Which because he's resonated for you
[2:48]Well, it's it started quite frankly with the
[2:52]With the 2016 election not to get political, but there was this question about you know, who's American who's American enough?
[2:59]And you know a lot of questions were raised about Muslims and and the
[3:03]Can Muslims be patriotic and all these questions were being raised and I had never sort of
[3:09]Considered the fact that you couldn't be American in fact one of the one of the stranger things about our world is wherever you are
[3:15]You are a little bit American because America is American. I'm kind of so pervasive
[3:20]That I've always felt that it's sort of sprawl over the world and we've
[3:25]Culturally, I don't want to use this word, but we've culturally colonized parts of the world, you know
[3:30]And so because of that there's a part of everyone that recognizes certain things like McDonald's or Coke or
[3:37]Star Wars or what have you, you know, they're everywhere and so
[3:41]It was very strange to me to be suddenly faced with this question of hey are you American?
[3:46]Because of your religion and so
[3:49]The book was in part of response to that sort of I just exploring the idea for myself because at that point
[3:54]I had no illusions that I'd be published, but you know that happened
[3:59]Well, how did you end up right so was it really a surprise that the book was picked up
[4:04]Wait tell me about the journey of that sure well, I've wanted to be an author since I was a kid
[4:09]But I never I mean it's
[4:11]the industry from the outside is so
[4:14]Sort of obscure right
[4:15]I mean it's really hard to see and figure out what things are
[4:18]And it seems like a pipe dream, you know, and sometimes people think about authors like now that I have author friend
[4:23]It's like okay, just they're just people, but
[4:26]It always seems like an impossibility
[4:28]At least it did to me and so I never really thought I'd actually be publishing it
[4:33]My wife was the one who was very encouraging and so it was like she's like you're really good
[4:37]You should you should write and the thing was the reason her opinion had held some
[4:43]More weight than usual was because our courtship was almost entirely
[4:47]By emails because we had an arranged marriage and we didn't get to meet and talk more than four or five times
[4:54]So we just exchanged these long emails. There's probably a novel in there somewhere
[4:58]All right, so I just I'll be long letters you wrote to each other and I was like well
[5:02]She's seen enough on writing to know if I'm good or not and so she really pushed me to write it and then once the book was done
[5:10]It just so happened to get finished like two days before a contest
[5:15]Which is no longer online?
[5:16]But there was a contest called pitch wars which was happening and I was like, you know what I haven't even
[5:22]edited this yet it hasn't been proofread
[5:24]But I'm gonna get rejected anywhere so I might as well just submit it, you know
[5:27]And so I did and the rest is history. No wait finish the rest. This is amazing
[5:32]Well, I got picked up by by these two amazing mentors and then
[5:37]My it would be what happens with pitch wars is or would use to happen with pitch wars was
[5:42]You would get these mentors would work with you for about six months helping you refine
[5:47]You know your book and then
[5:49]Or they editors or agents or who are they well just other writers. Oh, okay
[5:54]and so
[5:55]Basically what happens is they the guide you through the process and then there's an agent showcase
[6:00]So all these manuscripts. I think about
[6:04]No, I don't know how many there are. I want to say there were at least 60 70. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that
[6:08]I have many we're not coding. Nobody let's
[6:12]Notice listening. Um, no, but seriously, um, I don't remember exactly how many there were but there were a lot
[6:17]All these authors have the benefit of the experience of people who died before and they take you through the journey and at the end
[6:24]The there's a pitch and the pitch is part of a showcase for agents to come and say hey
[6:30]I like your pitch. Can you send me the the book? And so I ended up getting a couple of people interested
[6:35]They read it and then I
[6:37]Got an agent and then we went on sub and there was lots of rejection. I
[6:42]I ended up writing I ended up writing my YA novel more than just a pretty face
[6:48]That sold first that became my debut, but
[6:51]I had written that Muslim before and you know
[6:55]so it was my first novel and
[6:57]It was it was quite an experience, but I had not expected it to get published and it just it just so happened that it it works
[7:05]So here we are wait, so let's go back to the arranged marriage for a second
[7:10]So what happened when you met like how did that work?
[7:14]So you've became good friends basically with your wife
[7:17]So we're in this epistolary way and then
[7:21]Is everything good like
[7:25]Everything's great. Yeah, we have
[7:27]Two kids. It's been 10 years now. I think
[7:30]So yeah, it's just it's just a different
[7:33]I mean, you know, it's a different about doing things
[7:35]You can still say no you just you don't get unshaper on meetings
[7:39]So you get to meet them and the entire family is there
[7:42]So it's like a very chaperoned date and it's a little weird
[7:46]But you sort of do it often enough that you get used to it
[7:49]I guess as much as anyone can get used to something like that
[7:52]So I was an awkward encounter, but you know you meet a couple of times and then you either call or text
[7:59]Be more more
[8:01]Literary so we wrote to each other. It was almost the choreo in that way. I guess but um, you know
[8:07]We went to this and yeah, we were
[8:10]Um, I think we knew each other for about six seven months before we got engaged and then yeah, it's been that was
[8:17]a long time ago, but
[8:19]I love it. It is a different way of doing things. You know, it's just it's like
[8:23]It's like a dating app except it's run by your mom
[8:28]You know instead of algorithms we have in the community who are running it, but that's this all it is
[8:34]I think my mom would probably do a good job running it
[8:39]I think I think it's one of those things where when you're young it's rare fight frightening because
[8:44]You feel like you feel like almost no one understands you when you're young
[8:48]But especially your parents, you know, and I think as we grow older we've come to value their wisdom and
[8:54]Perspective more so I think now I sort of see the benefits of it
[8:58]There were times in my life when I was much younger when I was that was terrified. So better work out
[9:02]So more companies
[9:04]What kind of work were you doing before you were writing? I was in a dream
[9:09]You were in a turning. Yeah, I did a workers compensation insurance defense which is as boring as it sounds
[9:16]I used do you still do that at all? I got laid off
[9:21]last Friday
[9:24]I'm sorry
[9:27]Maybe it's a blessing now you can write more, you know, you can start your own dating app. Maybe you should
[9:33]I don't think that's in my future
[9:35]But hopefully I can focus on the writing. I mean, you know honestly it got to be
[9:40]It got to be a lot because
[9:42]There were times especially when I was working on bad Muslim and pretty faith at the same time
[9:47]You know what the edits for one would finish on the next one was due
[9:50]It just got very intense. There were times before about about six to eight months
[9:55]I was sleeping like three hours a day
[9:58]You know, I gained like 40 pounds. I mean the whole thing
[10:00]It was just, it was, it was a whole thing.
[10:02]So I made it through that.
[10:05]I think maybe it's time to focus on the writing
[10:07]or pick up a job that's less demanding
[10:09]because, you know, billable hours and attorneys,
[10:11]it's, there's, it's famous for a reason.
[10:13]So maybe you could just write a whole book
[10:16]about lack of sleep and waking.
[10:18]Because, you know, I feel like people don't totally,
[10:23]haven't been bashed over the head without enough.
[10:26]You know, I mean, I feel like it's not that you can solve
[10:31]that problem so easily, but, you know,
[10:33]maybe it would make people feel better
[10:35]that that was happening.
[10:37]Yeah, I thought that I had all those cookies yesterday
[10:41]who was asleep.
[10:42]Well, I mean, you know, honestly, it becomes,
[10:44]it becomes about consuming lots of coffee
[10:47]and consuming lots of carbs is for stay awake, you know?
[10:50]Yeah, I have my ears.
[10:52]In fact, you know, when bad Muslim came out,
[10:55]my wife did a, she insisted on doing this
[10:57]because I would have like six months of coffee in my desk.
[11:00]So she lined them up next to the book
[11:01]and she took a picture for Instagram
[11:03]because that's what it was.
[11:05]It was just coffee and people were like,
[11:06]when do you find the time to do this?
[11:08]I'm like, well, you gotta make time somewhere.
[11:11]You know, you have your kids, you have work.
[11:13]And then the only place left was sleep.
[11:16]Much to the chagrin of my, my best friends.
[11:20]He's a physician.
[11:21]He lost his mind.
[11:22]He was like, what are you doing?
[11:23]But it was, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity
[11:26]that like we talked about.
[11:27]I didn't think I would ever get.
[11:28]So I still believe you can catch up.
[11:30]Like once a month, I sleep a lot.
[11:34]And I feel like that offsets the lack
[11:35]of sleep the rest of the time.
[11:37]Okay.
[11:37]Yeah, they call the, they call it a sleep debt.
[11:40]So yeah, that's what this, I've heard some books about it
[11:43]because my friend made me, it's so,
[11:46]it's actually really interesting.
[11:48]These are the psychology of sleep
[11:50]and some of the sleep neuroses are really interesting too.
[11:53]So anyway, if you're ever interested.
[11:54]I haven't just did it actually.
[11:56]We did it.
[11:56]Okay.
[11:57]All right.
[11:58]Well, interesting.
[12:00]Okay.
[12:01]Well, we'll see if my, if my theory holds up.
[12:04]So what books are you working on now?
[12:07]Oh, right now I'm kicking around some ideas.
[12:09]They're really in the infancy stages.
[12:10]My problem usually is finding the voice of the character.
[12:14]So I will keep revising the concept.
[12:16]I'm less interested in the concept.
[12:18]Usually than the character.
[12:19]And then the main thing is finding the voice of the character
[12:22]and then making the character likable enough
[12:25]that people want to stick with them for 300 pages.
[12:28]So right now I'm, I'm trying to think this character out
[12:31]and I'm not there yet.
[12:33]So I've been pitching to my agents.
[12:36]I've been pitching to my editors.
[12:38]So we will sort of see how it goes.
[12:39]But I throw a lot of stuff away.
[12:42]I do a lot of writing that doesn't do it like a day.
[12:45]So if bad most of them was what 350 pages,
[12:48]there is 300 pages that never saw the light of day.
[12:51]That's how it was really bad, myself.
[12:53]Yeah, that was really, really bad.
[12:55]And, you know, Sally, if I repeat, who does,
[12:57]who's wonderful, she does children's books.
[12:59]You know, she says it's a very inefficient
[13:00]we are writing and she's absolutely right.
[13:02]But it's the only thing that works for me.
[13:03]And so until I figure the voice out,
[13:05]I will keep writing the opening scene
[13:08]and I'll keep redoing it.
[13:09]So it's right now I'm working on this guy
[13:11]who's supposed to be a screenwriter.
[13:13]I can't get his voice quite right.
[13:15]So now I'm like, okay, is he really a screenwriter?
[13:17]If he's a screenwriter, how successful is he, you know?
[13:19]Just tinkering the story to make the voice work
[13:22]and then we'll figure out the concept from there.
[13:24]I mean, I think the intersection of efficiency
[13:27]and creativity is not exactly,
[13:31]I mean, it's like an inverse relationship.
[13:34]You cannot be efficiently creative, right?
[13:37]It's part of me always access words
[13:40]and for writing too much and winnowing it down.
[13:43]I mean, everybody essentially,
[13:45]I think it's a rare author who will write down
[13:49]the exact words that get used.
[13:51]I mean, you have to kind of throw stuff down
[13:54]and winnowing it away like a sculptor a little bit,
[13:57]whether it's at the beginning
[13:58]or the middle or the end or all along.
[14:00]I mean, it's almost impossible to just put down
[14:03]the perfect things.
[14:05]Yeah, I mean, I do envy people though
[14:07]who use outlines for example, you know?
[14:10]You know, people were, there was a thing a while back
[14:12]where on Instagram or something,
[14:13]not that I'm on social media a lot,
[14:14]but someone was posting, people are posting their outlines
[14:17]and I was like, I should post a picture of her blank page
[14:20]because that's what I use.
[14:21]You know, I just don't.
[14:22]And what that allows me to do is I've characters
[14:26]like Ashir Bhakti who's a landlord and bad Muslim, you know,
[14:29]he was supposed to be a minor character
[14:30]with no real voice or real role.
[14:32]He was just there for comic relief for one scene, you know?
[14:36]And then because I had no outline
[14:38]and no idea what was gonna happen,
[14:39]you know, he sort of took over
[14:41]and became a pretty significant character in the book.
[14:44]I'm not sure if that would have happened if I had an outline.
[14:46]I also find like if I have an outline
[14:48]it's sort of, I've told a story to myself
[14:50]and I'm less interested in it,
[14:52]but there are people who are very disciplined about
[14:54]this is my outline, this is the rising action,
[14:56]this is the climax.
[14:57]And so I'm going to build around that.
[14:59]I envy that because I think that is,
[15:02]that was pretty great to know where you're going
[15:04]before you start.
[15:06]Yeah, I'm with you though.
[15:08]I mean, I feel like if I figure everything out ahead of time
[15:11]that I'm just like putting words down,
[15:14]like the part of the writing is the fun of discovery.
[15:17]I actually just interviewed a woman earlier today.
[15:19]She wrote a novel called The Caretakers,
[15:21]which was really, really good,
[15:22]but it's from all these different points of view.
[15:25]And I was telling her about my favorite point of view
[15:27]and she was like, oh, I almost didn't even include that person.
[15:30]You know, and then she became this huge,
[15:32]that was the last character she added.
[15:34]But if she had stuck to it, you know,
[15:37]and then this became a huge character, right?
[15:39]The ones she put in last.
[15:40]So you just never know.
[15:42]Yeah, I mean, bad Muslim was written from one point of view.
[15:45]And then later, I added in the other point of view,
[15:48]it was written where about page 175 is now,
[15:52]that was page one.
[15:53]That was a wonderful thing.
[15:55]It was rewritten multiple times.
[15:58]Yeah, it was all those books that, you know,
[16:01]I really wanted to make happen.
[16:03]And so it worked really hard on it.
[16:05]And it was one of those where we went for sub
[16:08]and then we got what's called an R&R
[16:11]for people who are in the industry as, you know,
[16:12]revised and resubmitted and all that kind of stuff.
[16:14]And what they wanted to do was do
[16:16]I am kind of in the industry.
[16:17]And I don't even know.
[16:18]I've never heard that before.
[16:19]So okay, or no, I know.
[16:22]And so what the idea was, hey, you know,
[16:24]you need a beer canvas.
[16:25]They said you're telling us big story.
[16:27]You want a beer canvas to go back further.
[16:30]And so I remember it was like these three months
[16:33]where I sort of went radio silent
[16:35]and I was just writing.
[16:36]And then eventually I got an email from my agent saying,
[16:38]what are you doing?
[16:39]And I'm like, I'm working on this thing.
[16:40]And she's like, can I see it, please?
[16:42]Okay, and then she wrote back and she's like,
[16:46]oh, this is good.
[16:47]And I'm like, oh, awesome.
[16:48]Oh, so it was, this was a difficult novel
[16:52]because it was written in like,
[16:54]it was written and rewritten and then rewritten.
[16:56]And then once it was done, I was very proud of it.
[16:59]So that's great.
[17:00]Actually, what I referenced in the very beginning
[17:02]or what I said when I was going to talk about later,
[17:04]a friend of a friend's husband had like a very similar scene
[17:07]to the opening scene in yearbook.
[17:10]Except he was trapped in a garage in New Jersey.
[17:13]Yeah, his dad put him in there
[17:15]and was like, you have to do this.
[17:17]Oh, wow.
[17:19]With, yeah.
[17:20]That's intense.
[17:21]I know.
[17:22]And it's forever changed the way I think of this person.
[17:24]Yeah, but ultimately he couldn't do it.
[17:30]He didn't do it.
[17:30]Yeah, but I was in college, my dad.
[17:33]So just for anyone who's listening.
[17:34]I know, I was like, should I give this away?
[17:36]I mean, it's, you know.
[17:37]It's the first scene.
[17:38]I know, but you never know.
[17:39]OK, go ahead.
[17:42]But what we're talking about is there is an animal sacrifice
[17:45]that happens on the the E that happens
[17:48]after hydrogen Muslims.
[17:49]And the idea is to commemorate the sacrifice
[17:52]or the almost sacrifice of Abraham office of the sun.
[17:56]And so Muslim sacrifice, gold circles or sometimes camels,
[18:00]and the meat is given away often to the needy.
[18:03]And then it sort of is just as a festival of sacrifice
[18:06]is literally the translation.
[18:08]And so when I was in college, I had done this before
[18:11]when I was young as a kid, but then like decades past
[18:14]because you moved here.
[18:15]And you know, you can't just go get a goat
[18:18]and you know, sacrifice it here.
[18:19]It's somehow this works.
[18:21]So my father decided when I was in college
[18:25]that we would go to a farm.
[18:27]And in this farm, we would be a really
[18:29]shouldn't be telling the story for public service.
[18:31]But anyway, it's all right.
[18:35]It's a little embarrassing.
[18:36]But anyway, a father decides that we're gonna go to this farm
[18:39]and we're gonna sacrifice this goat.
[18:41]And I will be the one to do it.
[18:42]And I was like, okay, well, I've done it before.
[18:45]So I can do it again, even though it was a decade ago.
[18:47]So I go up there and I realized,
[18:51]I really don't want to do this, you know,
[18:52]at this point in my life, but there's the goat
[18:55]and they're bringing the goat over
[18:56]and they have to go down and I'm nice in my hand.
[18:59]And I'm like, okay, okay, just close your eyes,
[19:02]just close your eyes and just do it, it'll be over.
[19:04]So I close my eyes and I reach with the knife
[19:07]and I think I'm done and I open my eyes
[19:11]and the goat's just staring at me
[19:12]and I'm staring at the goat
[19:14]and I'm the ghost of the life and everything's fine.
[19:17]And I'm like, what's going on?
[19:18]Well, I held, I was holding my backwards.
[19:20]So the blade wasn't touching me.
[19:22]The actual sharp part wasn't touching me.
[19:24]And the farmer got really annoyed with me.
[19:26]He yanked this knife from me and just did it himself.
[19:29]And the rest of the way home, it was like 50 minutes
[19:32]from my house.
[19:34]And the rest of the home, like my dad was giving me this lecture.
[19:36]It was like, I was the downfall of the Muslim civilization
[19:39]because I couldn't like, kill this goat.
[19:42]It was a whole thing.
[19:43]So anyway.
[19:44]Well, but when you put in the book,
[19:47]I found very interesting, which it's not just the sacrifice
[19:51]of the animal, it's what you sacrifice yourself
[19:53]by learning what it's like to hurt the animal
[19:56]and that it's supposed to teach you to value life
[19:59]and not.
[20:00]take anybody else's life for granted.
[20:02]Granted, it's a very extreme way of teaching this.
[20:05]But now I understand, like the rationale,
[20:09]at least of the teaching.
[20:12]Yeah, it connects you to, I mean, whenever I eat meat,
[20:15]like, there's this part of me that knows where it came from.
[20:19]There's this kind of, I feel like,
[20:21]especially with modern people,
[20:22]where we go to the grocery store
[20:23]and it's packaged for you and you're just cooking it.
[20:26]Like there's this disconnect between where the food came from
[20:28]and your consumption of it.
[20:30]And it sort of, it forms this link,
[20:32]which I do appreciate having that link is just,
[20:35]I was in college and I wasn't there mentally.
[20:37]I was just told the day, oh, that you're going to do this.
[20:40]I remember this one time, this isn't Pakistan when I was a kid,
[20:44]they were going to sacrifice a cow
[20:46]and the cow got loose and started running through the streets.
[20:50]And like, all these people were like,
[20:51]nighs were like chasing this cow.
[20:53]And I'm like, see, this is the kind of stuff
[20:54]that ends up on CNN, all right?
[20:57]This is what makes us look better.
[20:58]So, lines in the beginning of the book,
[21:01]Islam has a marketing problem.
[21:03]And that sort of where it comes from,
[21:05]there's a idea that really strange things happen
[21:07]on that particular holiday,
[21:09]but it is obviously a very serious and so on thing.
[21:11]And there are, like you said,
[21:12]important lessons to be learned
[21:14]that I have found valuable in my life,
[21:16]but it's also, it's very, it's a difficult thing
[21:19]and it's supposed to be a difficult thing.
[21:21]Very interesting, wow.
[21:23]Okay, well, thank you so much
[21:25]for coming on mom's and I have time to read books.
[21:27]I appreciate this fun discussion.
[21:29]And I will be looking for a new app from you sometime soon
[21:34]or some sort of treat us on sleep.
[21:36]So, thank you very much.
[21:39]Thank you.
[21:39]Okay, thank you.
[21:40]Bye bye.
[21:42]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms
[21:44]don't have time to read books.
[21:46]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[21:48]at Zebioans and at moms don't have time to read books.
[21:51]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[21:53]and sign up for my virtual book club
[21:55]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:58]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[22:00]for the Sound Editing.
[22:02]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:03]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.