Saadia Faruqi: Hello, my name is Saadia Faruqi, and I'm the author of a middle grade novel, A Thousand Questions. The idea came to me because I visited Pakistan, which is where I was born and raised. I had gone there again to visit my family a couple of years ago during the summer vacations, and I had taken my kids with me. It had been a very big break since our last visit, and so the kids really didn't remember much. They were older and there was a lot of emotion going through them as they were living their summer vacations in this country that is kind of seen as the land of their ancestors, but they didn't have any real connection to.

I am the kind of person who always writes down things that I'm seeing and feeling. It was really fascinating to me my own emotions to be back in my hometown and also seeing my kids, this almost love-hate relationship with everything that they were experiencing. So, I got the idea of a story where one character is a Pakistani-American who is visiting this land that she's never been in before summer break. There is another main character who is from there and lives there, and how they are supposed to be alike but they really are nothing alike. Even in terms of language, they can't really communicate with each other, and what would happen in that story. That's how it all started.

When I was writing the story, I had some challenges in terms of putting myself in the shoes of a character who I had not been for a very, very long time. So, Sakina, who is the main character, the girl who lives in Pakistan, who is a servant girl, I had been in similar shoes a very, very long time ago. And so for me, my idea of what that country was and my idea of what life was there was very much from the past. And so it was a constant struggle and a reminder that I had to make to myself. That things have changed. I'm writing a story in current time. So, I have to get out of my own experiences just a little bit.

I would like my readers to really understand how kids like them live in other places. American kids have a very American-centric view of the world, and it's really important for them to see how kids their age live in other places, what struggles they might have, but then also realize that we are so similar, even if our cultures or our religions or our backgrounds are different. So, I'm hoping that kids who read these books or adults who read this book are going to really get a view or a perspective that's so different from theirs, but also similar in many ways.

Now I'm going to share a little bit from the beginning of A Thousand Questions.

Chapter One, Mimi, Summer Vacation Is Overrated.

Imagine an oven like 400 degrees. Then imagine crawling inside and closing the door behind you. That's what Pakistan feels like in the summer.

"Who would be dumb enough to crawl inside a super hot oven?" you ask.

Good question. Nobody with brains, that's who.

We're standing outside the Jinnah Airport in Karachi trying to get a taxi from a small kiosk with dirty windows. There are a million people around me all talking faster than I can understand. And anyway, they're talking in Urdu, so I have only a vague idea of what they're saying. Mom fans herself with a Parents Magazine, the blonde model on the cover all creased as she tries to keep her mom cool. I try fanning too, but my copy of the new Dork Diaries is too thick and too short to give me any air.

"Ugh," I grunt, and mom turns to frown at me.