My second daughter Shila was at Class Two or Three. One day, as I looked over her homework notes, my eyes were stuck at one place. I found she wrote one sentence entirely backwards. Is this an new game? I was startled when I looked at it more carefully and found her whole notebook was filled with such things. Many sentences were written in opposite order. You can read them only in front of a mirror. Doctors told me that some information came to her brain in the opposite order It is known as Dyslexia Autistic children have this syndrome.
That was the first time I came to know about Autistic children or Autism. After many years. I met autistic child at Nuhaspalli. His parents came for visit with the child. They let the boy play in the mango grove. He was walking in a very serious mood. Sometimes he bowed down to pick fallen leaves and kept them in his pocket. I was amazed at what the boy was doing and advanced towards him. His father politely told me, "Sir, Please don't go. He gets scared when he sees a stranger. He'll faint if a stranger touches him. He doesn't have any other problem besides this. He's a brilliant student." I could not talk to the child picking the dried leaves. I didn's grow any intention to write about it either.
Three years ago I was travelling by train from London to Scotland. A five or six hour journey. I Can't Just watch the passing scenes for such long hours however charming it is. I brought lots of books with me to read on the train. One of the books was by Karen Armstrong. It was her autobiography, The Spiral Staircase. In that book, the writer wrote about and autistic child. She was a baby-sitter of one such child.
The seed of the novel. Who Speaks comes from karen Armstrong's book. I'm not a researcher type of writer so I don't do a huge amount of research before I write. But I had to do that to write this book. Research was easier because of the internet. All the information is at your fingertips. Just press the button.
The curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon also helped me a lot to write this book.
I Write Who Speaks with deep pleasure. My life will be successful if I can share that pleasure with my readers.
Humayun Ahmed
Nuhaspalli