A Mother without a mask: A Westerner’s Story of Her Arab Family – Patrica Holton

A Mother without a mask: A Westerner’s Story of Her Arab Family

By Patricia Holton

Patricia Holton welcomed two young Arab boys into her home for the summer to oblige their father, a Gulf Sheikh for whom her husband acted as a consultant, she little realised how intertwined their lives would become…. ‘She was fortunate in the family to which fate had introduced her. The Sheikh, his veiled young wife, the sheikha, traditional, moral and deeply religious, became for her, with their four-generation family, the exotic, semi-royal characters in a living fairy-tale’. The Times. In Mother without Mask, we see both the sophisticated town houses and the traditional desert camps of the family. We see, when one of the sons marries, that it was Patricia who prepared the new house for his bride. But above all she sat with the women, listening and observing. Gradually she came to understand something of the background to the traditions, which govern their lives, and the problems facing the young people in a society, which is opening for the first time to western influence

Language: English
ISBN: 1860630685
Paperback, 278 pages