Acknowledgments

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to four women brilliant women: Nadine El-Hadi, my editor at Hoopoe Fiction and the best editor I could have hoped for; Alexandra Shelley, my writing teacher, who taught me so much that I still feel her sitting on my shoulder and whispering advice, even when I write in Greek; Alison Jean Lester, author of Lillian on Life, who read, encouraged, and critiqued; Rana Haddad, author of The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor, who believed in the novel and introduced me to Nadine.

Many thanks to all at The American University in Cairo Press for their professional excellence.

I dedicate this novel to my husband, Michail.

Although some settings in this novel are drawn from life, the characters and the plot are entirely fictional.