Love Affairs on Al-A'sha Street

Author: Badriah Al-Beshr

Three heroines search for their freedom: Aziza, who seeks it in love, emulating Suad Husni, the Cinderella of Arab cinema, and falling in love with an Egyptian doctor because he speaks in the dialect of black and white films. She considers running away, like Tahia Carioca did, to change her destiny. Then there is Wadha, the Bedouin woman who escapes her poverty to work in the women's market, eventually becoming its biggest merchant. And then Atwa, who actually runs away from her small village to become another girl, changing her name and destiny, to be reborn into an independent new life in Riyadh, far from the village. The events take place in a popular neighborhood in the mid-1970s of the twentieth century. The neighborhood is located on Al-A'sha Street in the Manfouha district. The novel begins with the romantic phase of black and white films and love affairs that start on rooftops where people used to sleep. But a new transformation begins after the advent of color television, characterized by a phase of extremist religious charge against the new developments that the city succumbs to. The first victim is the young neighbor, Saad, who searches for his identity and ends up being part of the Juhayman group that occupied the Grand Mosque in 1979.