Arab women writers

Arab women writers

A short story collection presenting the voice of Arab women through subjects like growing up female, love, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, self fulfillment, customers, values and winds of change.

There are gems from middle eastern fiction - Egyptian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Palestine, Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan. 

I particularly loved these stories

A mistake in the Knitting

By Ihsan kamal from Egypt, about a woman who gets engaged and realised that sometimes it’s too late to turn back... 

Another one from Ihsan- The spiders web -  about a childless woman and the fragility of a marriage...

My mothers friend 

A take on lesbianism by Nura Amin from Egypt 

Half a woman 

By Sufi Abdallah from Egypt, about a woman who falls in love but chooses her children.

International women’s day

The men can touch their private parts in public but decent women don’t. Women’s day is a joke. 

The breeze of youth

By Ulfat-al-Idibi. The worry over a daughter late from the cradle to the grave. Youth is a different story and standards of liberty also change with times 

Some lines which stayed with me-

They bred like rabbits, perhaps because their hours of sleep greatly exceeded their hours of wakefulness. 

She wasn’t afraid of him, but she feared that his words would provoke her to reveal opinions she would rather keep to herself. 

An Egyptian proverb runs, “Marriage is like a closed watermelon” I.e. you badly tell how it’s going to turn out.