The news reports of the chaotic and terrifying withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 made an impression on me. Since fiction tends to be my way of processing reality, a story started brewing. My imagination led me to set a fictionalized version of those events in a near-future France, transposing the regional conflict into a speculative battle between Fascist nationalists and pro-independence factions in Catalunya. My protagonist, Elsa Martin-Bashline, was an amalgam of various reporters I read and listened to in their accounts of the harrowing ordeal of fleeing the Kabul even as bullets were flying.
Catalunya, straddling the Mediterranean border of modern France and Spain, is a part of the world that has been very dear to me after I spent a season living and working in Perpignan and wandering the coastal towns of Collioure, Port-Vendres and Portbou. This story takes place in a half-nightmare vision of that region, tracing one woman’s attempts to survive not only the invading enemy but also the bad choices she’s made. “The Castles of Colibrisa” appeared in Miracle Monocle (Issue 19) and I’ve very grateful to the editors for choosing it.
