I decided to read this mostly because I crave tasting as many different cultures through literature as possible. I read the other reviews and thought I decided to read this mostly because I crave tasting as many different cultures through literature as possible. I read the other reviews and thought that maybe it will be light and a typical 'smalltown girl looking for a way to escape her boring surroundings' story, only set in Dubai. But it's definitely not how it was painted to be, and I had the pleasant surprise of getting into something complex and valuable in itself.
My suspicion is that the readers who dismissed it as an ordinary coming of age story aren't really that familiar with the Arab space and just couldn't tell which parts of the book are actually extraordinary for their cultural context. The research that the author put into documenting many different lifestyles from before the economic boom (nomads in the mountains, pearl divers in the sea, bazaar and city life) is very thorough and impressive.
Most of all, the story itself is very plausible. The tribe's girl who led a very isolated life is not the average Cinderella figure who is naive about the world because such is the way of fairy tales. This is a very Westernized interpretation of the story and quite a reductionist one.
In fact, it's entirely normal for Noora, the main character, to experience the world differently and to have a hard time discerning the double meaning of words, since she grew up in the mountains with only a few male members of the family. Also, we can see that this doesn't last, the entire narrative is an account of how she learns to find her way around in the bigger and harsher world, where dangers come less from nature and more from people.
My favorite quote: "An unfulfilled dream is like spilled milk on dry earth. It sinks instantly and leaves a useless patch to remind you that you can never taste it."...more
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