In a lonely place

"Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets," prophesied Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, before unleashing his frustration in explosive violence. This most American of anti-heroes serves as an ironic inspiration for Tarik, a disaffected Arab-American and would-be holy warrior in Only the Lonely, the new novel from local author Gary Zebrun. This is the second novel from Zebrun, The Sunday News Editor of The Providence Journal. His debut, the thriller Someone You Know, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

The movie-going experience is central to the book, both literally, and as a metaphor for the possibilities and difficulties of communication. In the weeks leading up to September 11, the three main characters - the fundamentalist Muslim, Tarik and his irreligious brother, Asim; and Sonia, the now-elderly former mistress of the young men's deceased father - find that the main thing they have in common is a love of film and a complex affection for the family owned movie theater in Lackawanna, New York, that serves as the novel's central location.

"Movies can be a transformative experience," Zebrun muses, "but they can be an escape from reality. The characters I'm writing about are isolated, and a movie can put you in isolation. You're alone with a film. It's not a shared experience in the way that a play is."

Zebrun understood the siren song of cinema from an early age. His family owned a small movie theater in Buffalo, and he recalls with fondness spending entire weekends there, watching the same movie three or four times a day. Although he is quick to point out that Only the Lonely is not an autobiographical novel, Zebrun has drawn on memories of his childhood in Buffalo.

"I've wanted to write about that theater for a while," he says, "but I couldn't find the hook." He laughs dryly and adds, "I didn't want to write a drizzly childhood memoir."

The hook came a year after the events of September 11, when news broke of the Lackawanna Six, a group of Yemeni-Americans with ties to al-Qaeda. The attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., had made terrorism a very immediate concern for most Americans. For Zebrun, it now hit even closer to home, quite literally, to learn that the next city over from his birthplace had served as a home for suspected terrorists. He set out to tell a very intimate story that reflected international concerns in miniature, about one immigrant family's struggles with secrets, discrimination, and religion.

"I had also wanted to write about the anti-gay drive in religion," Zebrun says, "and at the time I was reading a lot about how fundamentalist Muslims treat homosexuals, and I was just stunned by the cruelty and violence against gays. So that all came together in an eclectic way."

Aware of the anti-Muslim prejudice in the U.S. that followed the 9/11 attacks, Zebrun tried to walk a fine line between respect and criticism. He points out that the book is not a denunciation of Islam in particular, but religious fundamentalism in general.

"I think religion is the root of all bigotry," he explains. "I've gone from being a devout Catholic to an atheist ... so my bias against Islam is no different from how I feel about Christianity.

"And I think Asim is a healthy character, even though he's rebelling against his religion. That's true of a lot of 19-year-olds. I didn't want to write stereotypical attacks on Islam, and portray the religion as completely bigoted. But the character I chose was in the thick of that, so I had to be faithful to Tarik. He represents that part of fundamentalism that is really wacko."

It is mostly Asim who takes center stage in the book, with his relatable struggles with coming out, and reconciling the demands of family ties and his desire to go to an out of state college. Tarik is felt as much by his absence as his presence, and increasingly angry and unpredictable roadblock to the family's happiness. Yet just as Tarik haunts the novel, he came to haunt Zebrun as well.

"I became attached to Tarik much more than I expected," he reveals. "He's not really a terrorist. He's a poor, isolated psychopath. In his separation from everything, he's the most tragic of the characters."