Interview by Andrea Caswell
A Conversation with Danuta Hinc, author of When We Were Twins (Plamen Press)
Danuta Hinc’s novel, When We Were Twins (Plamen Press, 2023), follows a group of characters caught in cycles of violence and war. The book imagines the evolution of an intelligent young man into a radicalized terrorist, challenging us to see into his heart and humanity. In this interview with senior fiction editor Andrea Caswell, Hinc discusses the importance of creating connections across cultures, and explains how writing historical fiction forced her to question her own assumptions about human history and the consequences of war.
Andrea Caswell: In When We Were Twins, the main character, Taher, begins life as an innocent child, but evolves into a radicalized terrorist. His twin sister follows a different path. Can you tell us about the idea of twins and how this symbol informs themes in the novel?
Danuta Hinc: The novel is full of dualities and mirror images. We have the twins Taher and Aisha, and the young twins Markie and Julie. Also, the Holy Scriptures, the Bible and the Quran, quoted by men fighting on opposite sides of a war. We also have a Ukrainian soldier, Wołodia, a deserter from the Russian army in Afghanistan, who insists that what he learned fighting Afghanis is that all humans are brothers and sisters, literally twins. Another duality is the juxtaposition of the “stranger” and the “brother,” the “believer” and the “nonbeliever.”
In exploring the theme of duality, I wanted to construct a world in which everyone is connected
to everyone else on a deep spiritual, even mystical level, like twins in a womb, but only some people can see that connection. Women and girls, the ones giving and protecting life, are entangled in the world of men at war, trying to reverse the course of history. Some men, like Wołodia, or Naim’s grandfather in Palestine, also cross over to the world of peace. Some can’t make the necessary connections. I wanted to explore a world of someone who for some reason can’t see his inherent connection to others, and this was how Taher’s character was born.
Andrea: In the novel’s opening chapters, we experience the extremes of wartime, such as babies being born in hospitals while people die in hallways. For every human condition, there’s an alternate one happening nearby. Talk about the challenge of writing those early chapters, and how you approached them as an entry point into the rest of the book.
Danuta: I’ve always been interested in history, especially in history that is, for various reasons, omitted. When studying history, we know the major frames of events: we learn dates, the beginnings and ends of things. We know how many people lost their lives, which political party ended up forming this government or that. In short, we study the major points, and the words of those who determined the course of events, like prime ministers and presidents, and other political and religious leaders. What we don’t learn in history class is what happened to the millions and millions of lives of real people, not in numbers, but in specifics. The characters in When We Were Twins stand for the “specifics” of a handful of characters. They are all fictional characters, but they represent human possibilities. Their stories say: This could have happened. What if this actually happened to someone? What if Taher or Marek existed? What if little Julie existed, or Naim and Sarah?
Andrea: You spent several years studying religious texts such as the Torah to write the novel. Tell us about that aspect of your research, and how you decided to take that approach.
Danuta: It was important to me to immerse myself in the culture of the Middle East to learn as much as I could. A phrase I learned studying history at King Stanisław Sobieski High School in Wejherowo, and after that at the University of Gdańsk in Gdańsk, Poland, was “Persia, the cradle of our civilization.” I never forgot that phrase, and it sparked something in me on a very deep level. I wanted to learn about my historical roots.
I was very lucky to study the Torah with Rabbi Martin Siegel, whose guidance was essential to my understanding of the text. Our weekly meetings not only focused my attention on the subject, but also gave me the confidence to seek other sources, to interview people from different countries, including Israel, Palestine, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Egypt. What started with my Torah studies expanded to many other encounters and conversations, and ultimately, to friendships with people from those various countries.
Andrea: Your novel explores themes of belonging and faith, and the question of who is on whose side. A character says, “If the Russians hadn’t invaded Afghanistan, we would be sitting in Poland right now.” We learn that the geopolitical boundaries that separate people are in some ways arbitrary. Do you hope the book will help readers challenge their assumptions about separateness and connection?
Danuta: The emergence of Solidarity in Poland in August of 1980 was very concerning to the Soviet Union, because it introduced a challenge to the entire communist bloc of Eastern Europe. It sparked the Polish crisis of 1980-1981, which consequently lead to the imposition of Martial Law in December of 1981. Historians speculate that the Soviet Union, already engaged in occupying Afghanistan, didn’t have enough resources to also occupy Poland, and that saved the country from the very-possible invasion, which most likely would have squashed Solidarity.
Your question about “challenging assumptions about separateness and connection” is most likely the most important question I’ve ever received in relation to the novel. Yes, I wanted this to be the essence of the novel—to see similarities, to reach beyond politics and religion and different languages and traditions. I wanted to pose these questions—Can I see the humanity of someone who commits terrible acts? Would seeing the humanity of this person change me?
In the novel, journalists from all over the world congregate in the Dean’s Hotel in Peshawar on the way to their assignments, and we see them ruminate on different possibilities and outcomes after their meeting with Marek, who arrived from Poland to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
I placed the scene in the famous Dean’s Hotel, which doesn’t exist anymore, because it was a place where many well-known figures stayed throughout history. For example, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Winston Churchill (as a soldier journalist on his way to Malakand), Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, also known as Quaid-e-Azam or the “Great Leader,” and King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan. The hotel was a metaphor of a physical place of meeting and exchange between different cultures, religions, and languages. Similarly, the Silk Road that appears in Taher’s dream is that kind of place, of new possibilities where two worlds, the East and the West, lead to a point of convergence.
Andrea: In the Acknowledgements section, you’ve thanked people from all over the world—Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Gaza, Palestine—for their assistance and guidance during the writing process. Can you share some of your experiences as you researched and wrote the book?
Danuta: I am filled with deep gratitude to all who shared with me their time, knowledge, customs, religions, and languages. We broke bread, metaphorically and sometimes literally, for several years, which made the novel and its characters from the Middle East possible. When I felt like the task of learning about other cultures was too overwhelming, these same people encouraged me to keep going. I can’t overstate how helpful their support for the novel and for the subject was to me while writing.
Andrea: I recently read the book-length poem On the Road to Lyiv (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) by Christopher Merrill (translated into Ukranian by Nina Murray). Merrill writes: How to reconstitute neighborliness/Between two nations ardently at war?/Impossible to know who will forgive/And who will pass on to their enemies/And heirs a litany of grievances. Characters in your book, like the grandfather who’d survived Deir Yassin as a boy, seem to address these generational concerns of perpetuating hatred and violence. Do the wars we’re witnessing today seem like part of this cycle?
Danuta: The short answer is, yes. The longer answer is—this is a poignant observation and a very important question. I think of my Jewish friends who talked to me about the Holocaust, and I think of my maternal grandfather, who practically raised me, who as a young man witnessed mass murders in the Piaśnica Forest in September-October 1939, at the beginning of World War II. What can we do with the weight of history placed on the shoulders of individuals, on millions of people? Can we even imagine their experiences, their good deeds, their sins?
My Jewish friends told me that in their families no one talked about the Holocaust, because they didn’t want that weight to be passed onto their children and grandchildren. When asked, they on purpose answered with minimum information. They would say, “He was killed by Hitler.” When pressed for more information, they refused to talk about it, often changing the subject. My grandfather was traumatized by what he witnessed in the Piaśnica Forest for many years after the war. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and by the time I was born, the story was squashed by the family and he was forbidden to talk about it, especially by my grandmother. He resorted to talking about it in secret, to the one person who was interested and willing to listen, to his seven-year-old granddaughter, me. I was way too young for the details, so he invented a story about angels flying in the forest. By the time I entered high school, I deciphered the story and I completely broke down.
When we think about war deeply, when we study the details, when we meditate on the “rights” and “wrongs” and try to parse every aspect and angle, and all the possible points of views, all the “gains” and “losses,” we come to one conclusion—there are no winners. When we break wars down to the smallest elements, to the individuals, the ones whose lives are turned into numbers—because this is what wars do, they turn people into numbers—we see no winners.
Andrea: The character Wołodia says, “Promoting democracy, liberating the oppressed, or Jihad. They’re just different names for the same process.” It’s a striking comment and it stayed with me. Can you describe your thinking there, and the point you wanted to make?
Danuta: Wołodia is a Ukrainian deserter from the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. In 1979, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and conscription into the Soviet Army was required for all the Soviet Republics. Wołodia has an encounter with an Afghani girl which transforms him, and he suddenly sees the face of war in all its brutal, unforgivable horror, and decides to escape. Many Soviet soldiers who deserted during the war were hunted down by Soviet Army helicopters, killed and left in the valleys of Afghanistan. But Wołodia was lucky. The helicopters didn’t find him and he crossed over to the other side.
As he analyzes the war, and wars in general, he always comes to the same conclusion, which is that wars poison generations of people, not only those who actively fight in them, but also their children. He believes that the trauma experienced in wars is passed on, to the next generation, which is how the merciless cycle of history continues. Wołodia also doesn’t make a distinction between different types of wars. For him all wars perpetuate the cycle. The “name” of a war doesn’t change the essence of it, which is violence and destruction.
Andrea: You’re a great traveler, and you enjoy trying traditional foods in new places you visit. Tell us about the role of food in the book. I loved the details of Polish recipes for pierogies and bigos.
Danuta: In the novel, food is a character. Food is a communion, shared and loved. It is something given to strangers, and it plays a significant role in how people come together. Talking about food, sharing bread, drinking water in the desert, all these acts are metaphors for understanding the other. Food is a way to reach out to another person.
My husband and I recently traveled to Qatar, Indonesia and Australia, and what I saw time and again is that nothing makes people happier than hearing, “This is delicious.” Even when you don’t speak the language of the place, as soon as you swallow, smile, nod, and look into the host’s eyes with delight, you make a friend. For example, my new dish in Indonesia was oxtail soup, and it was absolutely delicious. Of course, I had seconds, and this often is considered as the highest compliment. We met many wonderful, warm, generous people in our travels, and food was often the bridge that connected us the fastest. To me, sharing food, breaking bread with a stranger, is sharing yourself, your culture and customs. It’s a beautiful experience.
Andrea: What are you working on now?
Danuta: I’m working on two novels. One of them started as my MFA thesis, and the second is loosely inspired by my own experiences. The first one is based on the life of my grandfather, because yes, the subject of the Piaśnica Forest is still with me. The second book will be about immigration, the consequences of leaving home and of starting over in a place with different traditions and norms, surrounded by a language one doesn’t speak.
Danuta Hinc is a Polish-American award-winning novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She holds an MA in Philology from the University of Gdańsk, Poland where her dissertation won the Polish National Competition for the best dissertation in the Humanities. She completed three years of postgraduate studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and received an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, where she was awarded the Barry Hannah Merit Scholarship in Fiction. When We Were Twins is available from amazon.com and www.plamenpress.org.
Andrea Caswell holds an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a senior fiction editor at Cleaver Magazine and is on the faculty of the Cleaver Workshops. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, The Coachella Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Columbia Journal, and others. She’s an alum of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Los Angeles, Andrea now lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. For more information, please visit www.andreacaswell.com.
