Ahmed Vasegh is a successful businessman in the north-east of England. But the women of the family lead tragic lives. Ahmed's sisters, Fatima and Selma, are married off against their will to rich businessmen who treat them as slaves. Ahmed's own marriage to Zahra is more successful at first, but Zahra's life turns to misery when her eldest child turns out to be a girl, Maha. Will Maha have a happier life than her mother and her aunts? Alas, beautiful and spirited as she is, she falls in love with a man who is not only poor but, worse, a Christian, and she refuses to marry the man her father has chosen. She pays dearly for her crime. This tragic novel shows all too vividly the restrictions which constrain the lives of women who live where the misery of fanaticism is treated as honour. Also by the same author, Life in the Sea Graves.