Mara, Daughter of the Nile

I came flying out of a back alley in Egypt, close to Mara's heels. Time was running short and everything was falling to pieces. I was expecting someone to jump out at us from every corner, and so was she. When she was blacking out on a palace floor, half dead, I was screaming silently from the shadows.

But that's what a good book does, right?

I was one of those kids who left the library with a paper grocery sack full of books; so did my mom, and so did my brother. We lugged our books home along with the celery, canned pizza sauce, and potatoes. After the groceries were put away, we hoarded books until we'd read them and then traded.

In those days, I read indiscriminately. Perhaps preferences came as I discovered that some books had power over me that others didn't have. I pulled Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw off the shelf because I was an Egyptophile from the moment I discovered Egypt; I didn't know I was forming a link that would connect me to a friend years later.

Mara was scary and breathtaking and made me squirm and cry and gasp. I think I read it twice before returning it. A slave girl in ancient Egypt, Mara had black hair and blue eyes. Her mixed heritage, likely Greek-Egyptian, ensured her lower class. Her intelligence and theft got her mixed up in a power struggle and ultimately changed her life. Unbeknownst to me, another kid across the country was reading the same book and gasping and crying and running through back allies after Mara.

In 2005, I moved across the country to go to college, where I met a tiny girl who didn't break 100 lbs but who carried a messenger bag that weighed very nearly half her weight. One of the classes we took together was a playwriting course, and one of the assignments was adaptation. She was especially endeared to me the moment she raised her hand and informed the class that she wanted to adapt a book called, Mara, Daughter of the Nile. "You've read that?!" I asked her after class--because everyone who has ever read a good book has had the impression that they alone have found this treasure.

Mara turned out to be hard to adapt, what with the scenes taking place all over Egypt and Mara nearly dying in the aforementioned palace scene. It's one thing to do that on film; it's a little harder to pull off onstage. Our friendship grew over lots of conversations about how to make it happen. I seem to recall that it was ultimately accomplished with some offstage work, but the result ultimately was that whenever I think of Mara, I think of my friend, too, and in my back alley memories of the book, we are running after Mara, screaming in the palace, and sailing down the Nile and hoping for the best, together.