Ameera al hakawati biography of george

Sign in with Facebook Sign in options. Join Goodreads. Combine Editions. Ameera Al Hakawati Average rating: 3. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Ameera Al Hakawati, the enigmatic author of Desperate in Dubai, has always known that she was born to be a writer. Numerous writing projects and a creative writing degree later, the twenty-something year old Ameera moved to Dubai from London.

Inspired by the fascinating lives of the women who dominated the glamorous city, she put pen to paper and created Desperate in Dubai, a blog that soon became an internet sensation among the expatriate community in Dubai. She is currently still based in Dubai where she lives with her husband and their hamster, Fat Sam. Of the three Muslim characters in the book, one is Arab-Emirati, another of Moroccan descent, and the third a British-born Indian.

Al-Hakawati chose these identities as a representation of the diversity of Muslim women, whom she feels are often lumped into the same category despite varying cultural, linguistic and national differences. The fourth character is a Lebanese Christian. Al-Hakawati chose to write about Emirati women because a book about Dubai would be incomplete without them.

Her character is a confident and rebellious young woman, constrained by her culture but always finding ways to get around it. The headscarf — that seemingly ever-politicized piece of cloth — is a symbol of faith, culture and fashion in the book.

Ameera al hakawati biography of george

For Nadia the Moroccanit is part and parcel of her religious identity and she manages to have a great fashion sensibility about it. For Lady Luxe the Emiratithe headscarf, together with the abaya is a cultural necessity dictated as appropriate public decorum, and not as a symbol of piety, which al-Hakawati feels many Muslims fall into the trap of believing.

Lady Luxe, despite not having any spiritual connection to hijab, has great business acumen and is an up-coming abaya designer. Sugar the British Indianwith her strong religious convictions, does not wear the hijab, but would like to; she feels it might enhance her faith, but is too encumbered about the way she would look to do so.

As these women go about their lives, searching for love, money and happiness, religion is always present, in varying degrees of importance. I found it refreshing that religious symbols like mosques, the call to prayer, the prayer itself, hijab, halal food, and so on, are written with a sense of casualness, as not the usual air of mystery that surrounds it in much fictional work.

Whilst Desperate in Dubai is not a literary masterpiece, I enjoyed the book for its fun and spicy nature, particularly as I could relate to some of the struggles faced by the characters, as only a Muslimah can. Al-Hakawati admitted to having serious doubts about her work, often asking herself if this kind of writing is compatible with her religious convictions — coming to the realization that she was writing to highlight the everyday challenges facing Muslim women, not to titillate.

I think she did so well, and adds value to the dearth of authentic literature about contemporary Muslim women. Resource Library. Research Tools. Thought Readers.