However, after completing the novel my students and I came to understand the difficulty she had in adjusting to the country that was now to be her home. Our first reaction to Salma's inability to forgive herself and to 'get over it' was based on the idea that she wasn't trying hard enough to settle into her new life in Exeter.

I had never read it before and I read it along with my students. I was eager to assign The Cry of the Dove this semester. I have used Faqir's second novel Pillars of Salt on several occasions. But just as things settle, the need to return for her lost daughter overwhelms her, and one fateful day, Salma risks everything to go back and find her.Ī multi-layered novel about the difficulty of self-forgiveness.Īs a professor of English in a state university and teacher of Middle Eastern Women Writers I am always looking for novels that will challenge my students. She learns English customs from her landlady and befriends a Pakistani girl who is also on the run, with whose help Salma finally forges a new identity. Away from her Bedouin village, Salma is an asylum-seeker trying to melt into the crowd, under pressure to reassess her way of life. Salma is rushed into protective custody where her newborn is ripped from her arms, and where she sits alone for years before being ushered to safety in England. Despite the insult it would commit against her people, Salma has the child and suddenly finds herself a fugitive on the run from those seeking to restore their honor.

Salma has committed a crime punishable by death in her Bedouin tribe of Hima, Levant: she had sex out of wedlock and became pregnant.

Timely and lyrical, The Cry of the Dove is the story of one young woman and an evocative portrait of forbidden love and violated honor in a culture whose reverberations are felt profoundly in our world today.

The Cry of the Dove by Fadia Faqir