"The doctor tells Salma that she must forget her past. But it has followed her
all the way from her tiny Bedouin village to this town in England 'where the
river meets the sea.' Salma violated tribal law by becoming pregnant before
marriage. To restore the tribe's honour, the villagers must kill her. Salma is
imprisoned for her own protection, and her baby is torn from her arms.
Years later, Salma is smuggled out of the prison and ends up in exile in
England. Living by her Immigrant Survival Guide, she struggles to navigate the
cultural divide between a permissive and often racist Western society and her
traditional tribal Muslim upbringing. Despite her attempts to start a new life,
the cries of her lost daughter compel her to revisit her childhood village, and
she embarks on a journey that will change everything.
Slipping seamlessly between the olive groves of the Levant and the rain-slicked
streets of England, The Cry of the Dove is a searing novel of forbidden love,
violated honour and a woman's courage in the face of insurmountable odds."
--jacket

While I think I liked the story, it was honestly hard to tell. Told in such a stream on consciousness style that it was really difficult to follow at times and to keep characters straight. One moment you are in England with Salma/Sally and the next paragraph in jail or making love in the homeland or on a ship. Overall a sad and beautiful story, but only if you can follow along enough to get the basic gist. I am sure that there is a lot that I missed along the way. ( )

Rewritten after some advice suggesting I make this review more PC and leave out all mention of religion or culture.

The story is of a young woman who falls for a man and gets pregnant and then he leaves her. Her child is adopted and forever leaves a hole in her heart and despite all attempts to make a new life for herself abroad she is always drawn back to the nasty, backward, prejudiced, wicked family and country of her past. The country isn't named but since the girl is a Bedouin its probably Lebanon or close by.

When the girl discovers she is pregnant she is sent to a very rough and crude prison for her own safety, because there her father and brother cannot kill her to avenge their 'honour'. But the men have long memories and when friends of hers leave the prison they are shot dead as soon as they exit. After a long time, seven years, she is helped by nuns to escape to and eventually ends up in Exeter, in England.

In her thirties she marries and feeling more secure she travels back to her family, dressing herself as a foreigner to lessen the risk of being recognised, as she traces her daughter. But it is too late, she has been shot and buried for the same crime as her mother and as her she weeps and wails on her daughter's grave, she too is shot dead and the father and brothers can now hold their heads up again, honour redeemed, having punished their daughters and sisters and granddaughters for the crime of falling in love with men who want nothing but sex, use no contraception and condemn their girlfriends to death should they be found out or the girl get pregnant. Where is the honour in that?

In the West we think of the man who abandons his pregnant girlfriend as dishonourable and feel the girl deserves our support, and we treasure the baby, no matter how it was conceived. Is this not the right and proper way? To preserve and respect human life, to cherish and raise children with love? Do you think this should be changed? Should the concept of honour reflect a woman's sexual activity or rather, the lack of it, or should it be to do with the overall morality of how good people try and live? Should imposing the death penalty be the prerogative of all males or remain, our way, with the courts of justice, if at all?

All the wrong answers can be found in this book.
( )

“So hungry for life like a locust, but you must not chew whatever you come across. One day you might chew a snake and it will sting back.“ - The words of a mother to her daughter.

Selma is a girl from a small Bedouin Village somewhere in (? Jordan) the Levant, being brought up very sheltered in a strict Muslim society, she becomes pregnant out of wedlock by one of the village boys she is in love with. She dreams of him taking her home on their bridal night. When she tells him that she is pregnant he denies all responsibilities and replies in an expected and awful chauvinistic manner.

I swallowed hard and then said "I'm pregnant".
His cockiness collapsed and he turned into a man troubled with a bent back and a trembling voice, "You cannot be. How?"
"I don't know" I replied and stuffed the last morsel of bread into my mouth.
When he finally looked up at me he was a different man, His brown eyes burning with anger rather than desire. He cleared his voice and said "You are responsible. You have seduced me with the yearning tunes of your pipe and swaying hips." he said and he raised his arm about to hit me..."I've never laid a finger on you, never seen you before, do you understand?" he said, wrapped his kufiyya around his head like a mask and walked off into the dust.

Once I reached 40 pages of this book I almost gave up on it. It was such hard work to read. The structure of the book is so, that it tells us the story of Selma in snatches of her memories from her past to the present, but this memories are jumbled within the paragraphs in seemingly disjointed order. At the same time I was intrigued by Selma’s life and carried on reading. I am glad I did so because once I got over the earlier hick ups and got used to the structure of the story it turned out to be a heartbreaking, beautifully written story. Fadia Faquir used flowing, engaging prose interwoven with the stories of Selma’s childhood.

Selma has to flee and seek shelter to avoid being killed by her father and brother, with the intercourse out of wedlock she shamed her family and tribe and “only blood” can rectify their honor. With that her long journey of self-loathing, unhappiness and depression begins. Initially she is in protective custody in a prison where she gives birth to a baby girl, this baby (Layla) is taken away from her straight away. After 6 years in prison a nun takes her to a convent in Lebanon, where she experiences happiness for a brief time. Her brother was able to track her down and so she has to flee again. One of the nuns comes from England, adopts her to be able to take her to with her. Selma finds it hard to find her feet in England and the author managed it very well to show us through Selma’ s eyes how torn she is between the often racist and superficial Western culture and her Muslim upbringing in a small tribal village.

“I looked again at the veil, which my father had asked me to wear and my mother had bought for me, folded on the bed. I rubbed my forehead and walked out. It felt as if my head was covered with raw sores and I had taken off the bandages. I felt as dirty as a whore, with no name or family, a sinner who would never see paradise and drink from its rivers of milk and honey. When a man walked by and looked at my hair my scalp twitched. I sat down on the pavement, held my head and cried and cried for hours.”

“They stripped me of everything: my dignity, my heart, my flesh and blood. My mother’s face was lit up with love when she told me the story of Jubayyna. She kept telling me that I was better than everyone else until I believed her, then I fell, and fell.

Once in England she cannot shake of her past and is haunted by nightmares of her brother finding her to restore the honor of her family and by the ongoing cries of her lost daughter. The Cry of the Dove is a novel of love, violated honor and the courage’s journey of a woman to find her feet in the world. The story shows with passion, beautiful prose and humor the reality of life of women brought up in an oppressive society and their difficulties in breaking these shackles.

“The rattlesnake stuck her fangs in my arms and released her venom, Mother” - The musings of Selma years later in her exile. ( )

Too confusing. The story kept moving back and forth so much that it seemed terribly disjointed. ( )