Egypt research provided me with many challenges as I wrote my two Chambers books.
Those spots I could physically visit, I did.
I stood on the steps of Oswald Chambers’ former Bible Training College at #45 Clapham Common in London.
My husband and I paused romantically in front of the “Light of the World” painting at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
We even visited trenches in the Somme and hiked all over Paris like Claire and Nigel.
“How did you learn so much about Egypt?” several people asked after reading Mrs. Oswald Chambers. “Did you go there?
I wrote A Poppy in Remembrance following the Arab Spring. How could I travel to north Africa?
I don’t think, at this point, I’ll ever go to Egypt–though I’d like to.
Instead, I turned to Egypt research materials where I could find them.
Books
Books, of course, led the way.
Since Oswald and Biddy Chambers lived in Egypt during World War I, I found books written about that time period.
Both fiction and nonfiction were invaluable.
Most notably in the fiction category, the Amelia Peabody stories by Elizabeth Peters.
The stories take place from the 1880s until WWI.
Since I knew Peters, a pseudonym for Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, knew her facts, I trusted her observations.
T. E. Lawrence of Arabia also had descriptions of this time period. Since The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of my husband’s favorite books. I merely had to pluck it off the shelf!
I had a lot of trouble with Thomas Kenneally’s The Daughters of Mars (owing to an inexplicable non-use of quotations marks!).
The novel, however, provided me with insight into the Middle Eastern theater from the point of view of ANZAC nurses.
The most important book was Baedeker’s 1914 Egypt and the Sudan, which I read on line.
Since it was published in 1914, it provided information about life during the years my characters lived there.
In fact, both Claire and Biddy used the book when preparing for their trip overseas!
Egypt Research Through Movies
Many movies are set in Egypt and they can stretch from Raiders of the Lost Ark and The English Patient (WWII) to Cairo Time (modern day) to even Murder on the Nile (1920’s).
They all gave me a sense of the air, the country, the dress and where things are located.
Did you know the Sphinx looks across the Nile at a Pizza Hut Restaurant today?
Only one person in A Poppy in Remembrance went to Gallipoli--another film that provided a sense of the time and place.
I also watched a variety of documentaries set in the country, again for a feel for the land and what my characters would have endured.
Lawrence of Arabia was the major source in movies for World War I Egypt.
Against David Lean’s telling, I could better follow the politics in the Ottoman Empire during WWI.
Beautifully photographed, I could see the type of British officers who walked through my story.
I even gave Captain Lawrence a cameo part in A Poppy in Remembrance.
The story of his life was one of the reasons I thought to write the novel in the first place.
What about the sense conveyed by books and movies?
Books and movies filled in my sight knowledge–what things looked like in the Middle East during WWI.
But what did the country smell like? How did food taste? Other than the horrors of sand dunes, what did the air feel like?
For that, I had to investigate a little more creatively.
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