Just about all of the characters are based on people I met in Cholistan. In fact, a few months ago I traveled to Toronto to meet Shabanu Tirmizi, who inspired the name of the main character. She is now a freshman at Magill University in Montreal - I hadn't seen her since she was 2-1/2. The character Shabanu was based mainly on a girl named Maryam, whom I met in a small settlement called Yazmin. She was a very fierce, proud, independent girl whose parents had died. She was being raised by her grandmother, and in many ways she also was the basis for the character of Fatima, and her grandmother was the basis for Auntie Sharma. The relationship between Shabanu and her sister Phulan probably was based on my relationship with my own sister, Karen. It's hard to say where reality ends and fiction begins.