my friend wrote a book

There it is. In my lap. Leila Marshy wrote The Philistine. 

I can't do a review—others have that covered—but I can do a reaction.
I loved that Nadia kept moving toward... Maybe not forward, but she's not content to not seek. She doesn't quite know what she's getting into, but she keeps moving and I wanted to go along because I understood that what she'd learn would be worth knowing. I loved the past in present moments. I loved Manal. I loved Bishara. I wanted to know Clare a little more.

You know something is good when, as you read, you collect bits that strike something in you and draw a smile or an ache. Here are some pretty pebbles I collected:

"How could we know? Our enemy now was all of history. All of history!"

---

Nadia hadn't seen any pigs. Maybe her mother was getting her animals mixed up? "But Mama, but Mama, they were dogs."
Bishara winked at her, he would take care of it.
But now she could see the animals now. She could see them and hear them and every now and then feel them. The sidewalks were sliced in two between the men who ignored her and the men who wanted to eat her for lunch.

---

Between them, in the empty space, she caught Manal's eyes. Her definitely watching eyes. "I'm going to stay here. Thanks for the invitation," she said.

---

Nadia shuddered with a laser-like awareness that informed her as to the business of every hair on her arm, every millimetre of space between them that was occupied not by fabric but by longing.

---

To everyone's visible relief, he approached from the long hallway, the shib shib shib shuffle of his slippers disconcertingly familiar. He could have been coming to tell Nadia it was bedtime, to ask her what she was reading, to entreat her to dance with him to Farid Al Atrash in the living room, to call her to taste his mujadara, the lentil dish he grew up eating and which he made, he swore, better than anyone.

---

The three of them smiled at each other, looking from one to the other. Something happened just then, in that precise moment. A fire like a lit fuse ran around them, energized the room, charged the air. They became friends.

---

...there was an unseen architecture that was sometimes visible, most times not. A framework of obligations, diminished expectations, and only the illusion of opportunities.

Just go now. Read it.