I Saw Her In My Dreams

I Saw Her in My Dreams is a powerful novel about interpersonal and systemic violence, examined through the lens of a relationship between Zahiyya, an anxious middle-class Omani artist, and Faneesh, the Ethiopian domestic worker she hires. When Zahiyya’s husband Amer, a novelist, leaves for Zanzibar in search of his biological mother, Zahiyya is left to confront her anxieties and prejudices. Both Zahiyya and Faneesh begin to suffer a recurring nightmare, prompting Zahiyya to read Fanheesh’s diaries in search of answers. Alone and afraid, Zahiyya reads excerpts from Amer’s novel, written from his father’s diaries about living in Zanzibar, where he fell in love with Amer’s mother, a Zanzibari woman whose absence still haunts him. Weaving between multiple perspectives and stories within stories, the novel explores honestly-but without sensationalizing or self-Orientalizing-the anti-Blackness that has endured in the Arab world and elsewhere.

Huda Hamed has published several short story collections and novels, including Cinderallat Muscat [The Cinderellas of Muscat].

Nadine Sinno is an associate professor of Arabic at Virginia Tech.

William Taggart is an instructor in the Arabic program at Virginia Tech.