The Girl with Braided Hair
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The Girl with Braided Hair was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the “Arabic Booker”) under the title, Passion Based on actual historical events – Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt and his relationship with a young, local girl, Zeinab Bakry Accessible writing, plot-driven narrative that is both set in the past and modern day Strong female characters exploring what is means to be a woman and to live passionately in both historical and present-day Cairo Books on the art world have great appeal such as Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World , B.A. Shapiro’s The Muralist , and, of course, similar to The Girl with the Pearl Earring , this follows the life of the girl behind a painting Yasmin, Zainab, and other characters in their orbit, are on journeys in search of a sense of personal freedom, personal and artistic passion and inspiration; and their stories and motivations cross cultural, gender, and historical boundaries Bookstore galleys
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Rasha Adly is an Egyptian writer, born in Cairo in 1972. She is a researcher and freelance lecturer in the history of art, and Cairo correspondent for the Emirates Culture magazine. She is the author of six novels, and The Girl with Braided Hair was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the “Arabic Booker”) in 2018.
Sarah Enany is a literary translator and a professor in the English Department of Cairo University.
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It was clear that Sheikh al-Bakri had made up his mind, and Rostom could see that it was no use arguing. He had not the right to decide his own fate: his destiny had always been in the hands of others, since the long-ago day he had been loaded onto a ship to be taken to Constantinople and sold at the slave market. There, he had been bought by a rich merchant who had gifted him to a friend of his a few months later, and that man in turn had taken him to Egypt and gifted him to Ibrahim Bey, a Mamluk prince. The latter had trained him to fight in his division, teaching him the art of mounted combat, until he rose to be a formidable warrior in the Mamluk army. But fate is fickle: the winds of change arrived in the form of the French Campaign, blowing away everything in their path. The Mamluks ran away and dispersed through the cities of Egypt, and Rostom ended up with Sheikh al-Bakri, who had been friends with his owner, the prince. He had promised the latter to make Rostom his servant and faithful guardian—and Rostom was faithful and loyal in every sense of the words.
Sheikh al-Bakri mounted his horse and Zeinab a mule, while Rostom dragged his feet weakly in their wake—Rostom, who used to run like the wind—his sack of clothes in hand. His tears flowed more copiously with every step he took away from the house, toward an unknown fate with this man who killed and slaughtered without compassion or mercy.
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