The distinguished Middle Eastern author Raja Alem grew up in Mecca at a time when the holy city was on the cusp of transformation from medieval to modern. In this vanished Mecca, vividly
brought to life again in My Thousand & One Nights, women hold center stage - especially Jummo, the wildly passionate daughter of Mohammed al-Baikwaly, the prominent sheik of the Zamzam
Water Carriers.
This faraway time and setting become compellingly real through the intimate drama of Jummo's life, the tragic arc of her affair with her childhood sweetheart, and her lifelong love for the
mysterious Sidi Wadhana, a more-than-human emissary from the netherworld. Jummo's world, veiled and invisible to outsiders until this telling of her story, has the feel of the true center of an
Arabia that comes to us in many exotic and threatening guises. Jummo's Mecca is a different world, with different narrative strategies, but her dramatic problems are universal: how lethal is
love, how dangerous is woman? And how sensual is the yearning for immortality?
