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I Think of You
Cover of I Think of You
I Think of You
Stories
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Ahdaf Soueif, the bestselling author of The Map of Love, writes poignantly and beautifully about love, and about finding one’s place in the world. Achingly lyrical, resonant and richly woven, and with a spark of defiance, these stories explore areas of tension–where women and men are ensnared by cultural and social mores and prescribed notions of “love,” where the place you are is not the place you want to be. Soueif draws her characters with infinite tenderness and compassion as they inhabit a world of lost opportunities, unfulfilled love, and remembrance of times past.
Ahdaf Soueif, the bestselling author of The Map of Love, writes poignantly and beautifully about love, and about finding one’s place in the world. Achingly lyrical, resonant and richly woven, and with a spark of defiance, these stories explore areas of tension–where women and men are ensnared by cultural and social mores and prescribed notions of “love,” where the place you are is not the place you want to be. Soueif draws her characters with infinite tenderness and compassion as they inhabit a world of lost opportunities, unfulfilled love, and remembrance of times past.
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Excerpts-
  • From the book Knowing

    I remember a time of happy, dappled sunlight. French windows open onto a flowering garden. From the garden gate to the open windows runs a paved and sloping pathway, and at the top of the pathway stands a bright blue tricycle poised for the dizzying, exhilarating glide down the path. All you had to do was get it to the beginning of the incline and lift your feet off the ground and whoo—away you went. You had to pull up smartly or you ended up inside the living room.

    The living room has huge, faded armchairs and colored rugs and lots and lots of books. The walls are covered with them. Some have pictures, some you are allowed to pick up and look at, some are not to be touched. All are to be treated with great respect and never torn or folded or scribbled in or put face downward or looked at
    while eating in case you drop food on them. In the middle of the books sit the grown-ups.

    The grown-ups are wonderful. They drink tea and smoke and laugh and talk all the time. The women are beautiful with red lips and fingernails. The men are tall and handsome. They all do clever things. They write books and make music and paint pictures. Their pictures blaze on the walls of our apartment.

    Looking back, I see a pool of sunlight, and in it, a child. She is dressed in a blue-and-white-spotted frock with a white lace bodice. She holds on to her mother's skirt. Seized by a sudden fit of shyness outside the door of the living room, she sucks slowly at her thumb. But then, coaxed and encouraged, she ventures in and is immediately picked up and cuddled and kissed to a chorus of "Darling." "I've got to paint her. I've simply got to paint her," cries Uncle Sameer, as he does every time and, reassured, she tosses her hair back and smiles up at him. Yes. The grown-ups are wonderful.

    And clever. And wise. They can do anything, explain everything. The child is lying in her bed. Every time her mother puts out the light a horrible creature with long curving arms appears on the ceiling of her room and she screams. Her mother comes back in and switches on the light, but she can see nothing. After a bit she calls the father. He too can see nothing, but he lies down beside her. Her mother switches off the light and closes the door. He sees the creature on the ceiling. "It's the shadow of the chandelier, little goose." He comforts her and shows her how it moves when the chandelier moves and explains about light and shadow. She is safe.

    Yes. The world is safe and pleasant and the worst grief I know is to be beaten at Snakes and Ladders by Uncle Murad. He moves my counter slowly down every curve of the final fatal snake and I watch, lips trembling, on the verge of tears, till my father intervenes and carries me off.

    My father is a psychologist. He is very strong. He can crack nuts by pressing them in his hands. When we play in the garden he can run very fast. He runs very fast in circles. He runs so fast that I can't catch him. But after a bit he slows down and I am able to run up to his legs and hold him tight.

    The garden is always sunny. I play with my blue tricycle or eat my meals sitting in a wide-eyed rocking duck. This is my home. I know the address by heart.

    Near my home there is the club. My nanny, Dada Zeina, takes me there most afternoons. In summer I swim. At other times I play on the swings. Sometimes I have a magazine or a picture book. I sit on the grass beside Dada Zeina and look at the pictures. She chats to the other nannies, but I am absorbed in the pictures.

    In an older part of town there is another house that I go to often. There too I know the address by heart. It is older than our...
About the Author-
  • Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999, as well as Mezzaterra: Notes from the Common Ground and the novel In the Eye of the Sun. She also has translated from the Arabic the award-winning memoir I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. She lives in London.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    January 22, 2007
    Soueif (shortlisted for the Booker in 1999 for The Map of Love
    ) serves up a mostly stale collection of previously published stories, all at least a decade old, about clashing cultures and disappointed love. The best are three stories that follow Aisha from her Cairo childhood to a rough period as a teenager in 1964 London, where, as the misfit daughter of Muslim intellectuals, she encounters boorish classmates who tease her about polygamy and camels. Back in Egypt years later, Aisha confronts sorrowful memories of her doomed marriage. Two related stories, also set in England, feature Asya, a Middle Eastern woman moving on after a failed marriage and a miscarriage. Soueif incorporates wonderfully atmospheric details, particularly in the stories set in Egypt, but the stories feel thin and are too frequently overly lyrical. Though competent, these stories comprise the early works of a writer who has come into her own in later works.

  • Booklist

    February 15, 2007
    In these nine vividly rendered short stories, the Cairo-born Soueif (" The Map of Love," 2000) seems equally fascinated with the tenuous situations of immigrant women living in their adopted countries and with the difficulty of sustaining love in long-term relationships. In the title story, a pregnant woman develops dangerously high blood pressure and must be hospitalized; her Western dress threatens the more religious women on the ward and draws a doctor's sexual innuendo. She takes comfort from her memories of a trusted friend sick with cancer, who defied her illness by wrapping her head in a green silk turban while lying in a "theatrical" bed "worthy of Cleopatra." The women in these stories long to be stronger than the cultural forces aligned against them but find their lovers and their confidence fading away. Still, small gestures sometimes stand in for larger acts of rebellion; the restless but timid teen in "1964" finally stops attending school, where she is the object of much ridicule. The potent themes and far-flung settings make this collection rich reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

  • London Review of Books

    "Soueif is a political analyst and commentator of the best kind."

  • The Guardian "Highly unusual and richly impressive. . . . The author weaves a circle round us thrice with the touch of a born sorceress."
  • The Times (London) "There is lively, lucid writing here, vivid description and sharply observed dialogue."
  • Hermione Lee, The Observer "A fetching and original talent."
  • Edward Said "Ahdaf Soueif is one of the most extraordinary chroniclers of sexual politics now writing."
  • The Sunday Times (London) "A convincing and skilful writer."
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    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

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