ROBERTS What about your case? Did that happen in your case? Your special skill seems to be language, but — what do I know?
NAZEER Yes, maybe that’s it. It’s a certain kind of precision of expression. Or not even a precision of expression, but an agility of expression, which for me, in the first place, came about because of learning how to write well. Then, from learning how to write well, it turned into being able being able to speak well about particular topics. Whereas I’m not so good at being in a meeting with 12 people and trying to get what I want out of that meeting, I’m better at writing a very persuasive email to 12 people.
ROBERTS A less-useful skill. So your teachers recognized your language ability, your early teachers?
NAZEER No, because at that stage I didn’t have it.
ROBERTS You didn’t have it?
NAZEER What my early teachers helped me to do was to develop it, was to put me on the first steps of the ladder towards having it.
ROBERTS What did they do?
NAZEER Well, to begin with, it was very simple things, like giving, kind of forcing me to say particular words, showing me flash cards again and again until I would use particular words, beginning by kind of letting me be able to point to things when I wanted them and then actually withholding them until I would actually say the name of the thing. So there were techniques of that sort. There were also techniques of encouraging me to talk to other kids in the school who were at a similar position in their language development to me, so that we weren’t being over-awed in talking to much more linguistically agile kids, or fully linguistically developed adults, but in fact we were talking to people who were in a similar linguistic position to ourselves. That helps linguistic development.
ROBERTS So you’re saying that, by certain measures, you were linguistically behind. Your language development was retarded relative to other kids.
NAZEER It certainly was. I didn’t start speaking until I was about 6 years old.
ROBERTS It wasn’t because you thought it was boring, or anything.
NAZEER No, not at all, no, no.
ROBERTS So somehow, at some point, you caught up. Is that true?
NAZEER Yes.
ROBERTS So at some point, you caught up. You started off more slowly, and then you caught up, and then you surpassed.
NAZEER I’m not sure I surpassed, but yeah, I’ll agree with the “caught up” bit.
ROBERTS Well, you wrote a book. Very few people write a book, and not only that, your book is very well written, which is much rarer.
NAZEER But I chose to focus on writing as a skill that I wanted to develop and I worked hard at it in the same way that somebody else might focus on becoming an electrician, and work very hard at it, and they’d become much better at wiring than I’d ever be, possibly. But for me, writing is very much that thing; it’s a craft. It’s something I decided I wanted to be good at, and then I spent a lot of time learning to be good at it.