Summary

In Chapter 1, we are introduced to a new character. Sahar Murad was just six when her father Fuad Murad (uncle of Hani) was put to death by the Ottomans. Her father had left her with the bulk of his fortune. She lived her life under the careful watch of her mother and two other women, named Noura and Mariam. When she was eleven, her mother finally told her why her father had died. When she entered puberty and thus became of age to marry in their culture, her mother revealed that her uncles had pestered for years in an attempt to reserve her hand in marriage for their sons. Her mother devised a plan to hide Sahar’s puberty from the men. In 1923, with Mariam, she read in a newspaper about two Arab women in Cairo coming back from Europe...