At the Drop of a Veil
by Marianne Alireza
In 1945 Marianne Alireza moved to Saudi Arabia with her new husband. Suddenly she was a member of a wealthy and prominent Arabian family, veiled and cloaked like a biblical figure, visiting a king’s desert encampment, thousands of miles and two hundred years from home. This is the story of her 12 years in a harem, a group comprising her mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, children and servants, a place forbidden to men outside the family. Here she suffered more and more from her husband’s unexplained absences in America, London, Switzerland and elsewhere – until one day she learned that he had divorced her by one word spoken before a Saudi Arabian official in New York. There followed a dramatic escape, with her children, over the Swiss border – a carefully planned and dangerously executed adventure. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.