Sorry - couldn't help it! Warning: SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the trilogy, there is a reveal of story developments in this post. The good news: I am just putting the finishing touches on a fourth book in the Katya and Nayir series. You read that right. After all this time! But first, to all the people who reached out to me about continuing this series, I want to say a huge thank you—your emails and DMs have been an incredible source of encouragement and support. I apprecia

During my last visit to Jeddah, my daughter and I went to visit her father, my ex-husband. He and his family had moved outside the city, an hour’s drive from my apartment in al-Balad through increasingly spacious, undeveloped neighborhoods where big-box retail stores were rubbing shoulders with the desert. Situated improbably in a rather desolate area of unpaved roads and eerie quiet, my ex’s house was a sprawling, dilapidated villa. My daughter, who had lived there for a few

There are plenty of things that might characterize Saudi Arabia for aesthetic effect—a Bedouin teapot, if we’re being cliche, or the outline of a mosque. But during my last trip to Jeddah, I found myself noticing what I would call a more wide-ranging aesthetic. It is a stark combination of minimalism and ornamentation, like a vast empty sky and a single, modern minaret, decorated in geometrical forms. Geometric patterns are technically Islamic—they show up all over the Muslim

I took a pole dance class recently. I’ve done this numerous times in the past, but what made this class different was its focus on embodiment of the erotic, divine feminine. What this translates into is following what our bodies want us to do. It takes practice to not only listen to the cues your body provides, but to stay engaged with that listening and actively follow its advice. For years, I’ve taken dance classes and worked my way through them, Hermione-Granger-style, doi

For those who don’t know, a misyar is a marital contract that is sometimes used in Islamic countries. In it, a woman gives up rights she would have in a traditional marriage (cohabitation, financial support). The couple usually agrees to live separately. I would say there is a general sense of loose responsibility around the misyar. For example, a man might have a misyar marriage with a woman when he already has a wife, and feel no obligation to tell his first wife about it.

On my first day in Jeddah, I rented a car. I was delighted and smug, sitting in the office thinking something that once seemed like an impossible dream: I am a woman, renting my own car in Saudi Arabia. I was drawn to that car rental because the Google category boxes highlighted that the business was “moral,” but one of the categories had seven references to “exorcist.” I should have asked for more information, but a friend of mine used to be an exorcist and once told me it w