I’m a British-Arab author with a strong connection to my maternal heritage: my grandfather, Munir, was Lebanese by birth, blood and culinary habit, from a family who had relocated to Egypt. I marvel to think now of his journey with his parents and siblings from Deir al Qamar, in the Chouf mountains of Lebanon through to Egypt, before the region was divided by the violent creation of the state of Israel.

Did they journey by land, down through Sour and into Palestine, stopping perhaps in Haifa, Yaffa and Gaza and through the Sinai desert and finally to Cairo and the Nile? How I would love to trace the steps of their journey through a free Lebanon and a free Palestine.

I grew up in Essex and studied at Cambridge University: I went ‘up’ to study English, but switched to Arabic after two years – a decision which was, apparently, considered capricious, but about which I have no regrets. I lived and worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon while I was at University and, on graduating, decided to move to Ramallah, in occupied Palestine – despite the fact that the second intifada had begun only months before I arrived. More on this in later posts; suffice to say: Palestine is a part of my heart and soul.

In my late twenties, I taught English in secondary schools and then married my husband, Tom. When we started our family, I dedicated my time to the children, keeping various projects half afloat while tending bumped knees, giving cuddles, baking copious biscuits and cakes and eating similarly large quantities, listening to the cutest of conversations and clearing up a lot of mess. We relocated - on a whim, really - to a lesser known corner of southern Tuscany when the children were all under seven – giving me the chance to learn another language and us all the chance to experience a different culture – something that would be considerably harder to do since Brexit.

Home education on our return for a few years followed and finally, with daughter number one off to secondary school, I was back in the classroom a few days a week and it was time for me to address my fear of failure, and start writing the book that had been in me for years. I started work on Ever Land in 2019.