One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh

But it's too late, as she-left only with ``promise of menace''-becomes a victim of the city's mindless violence, personified by the sniper. As the two make love, little is said, and for the first time Zahra wants a normal life.

But her lover is almost certainly the lone sniper-``the only god of death, the only threat in their locality''-who shoots innocent passersby from a nearby apartment roof. As the war intensifies, her parents move to their native village, and Zahra, struggling to survive, falls in love for the first time. The marriage is a disaster: Zahra becomes even more withdrawn, then returns to a Beirut devastated by war. The homesick uncle is delighted to see her, but Zahra, frightened by the intensity of his attentions, hides out in the bathroom (``the only thing I have loved in Africa'') and in desperation accepts the marriage proposal of a local Lebanese man. She has two abortions and a nervous breakdown before her family sends her off to West Africa, where an uncle once active in Lebanese politics now lives in exile. After a severe beating from her brutal father, who suspects Zahra's role in his wife's deceit, the formerly bright student retreats into herself, obsessively scratches her pimple-laden face, and embarks on a meaningless affair with a married man. The story this time-reflecting the author's feminist sympathies, as well as her preoccupation with the contemporary Arab world-concerns Lebanese Zahra, who as a child had been used as cover for her mother's liaisons with another man. Arab writer al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh, 1992) details a cool, almost clinical journey to the heart of a young woman imprisoned within herself by family deceit-and liberated finally amidst the violence of war-torn Beirut.

One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh