Nejla by Barbara Hicthing

Pick this book at the Floating Book Fair  on the ship Logos Hope.

I quote from the cover of the book " A true to life story of love and tragedy in the Middle East".

Nejla got to know about the Bible from her stay with a cousin and she feel in love with it. When she went home, she brought along a copy of the Bible. Each day she reads it and learn to let Jesus into her heart.

Nejla is very close to her sister Leila. In fact, their father have arranged for them to marry two brothers, Hussien and Hamid. Leila is unhappy with the match as everyone knows that Hussien heart is blinded with rage. Nejla tries to help Leila by telling her about the Bible and God.

Subsequently, Nejla married Hamid and they found love. However, her mother-in-law hated her and tried as much as she can to make life miserable for Nejla. Nevertheless, Nejla with the love of God in her heart tried to forgve and love her mother-in-law and love her husband. And this love subsequently broke her.

First of all, I am not sure this book is a work of fiction or non-fiction. In some website, this book is classified as Biography while some classified as fiction.

Notwithstanding whether it's a work of fiction or not, I find that this book is hard to believe. There are so many bad things that happen to Nejla and yet she stayed calm.

Her conversion and the conversion of the people around her seems to be so "easy". For example the conversion of her Father-in-law.

The conversion of Leila is more believable as Leila made bargain with God if God would help her so that she don't have to marry Hussien, she would believe in God. That was what she believed until Nejla corrected her. Yes, that part is more believable as many had "bargain" with God although it does not work this way.

And why is that her Mother-in-law hates Nejla and Hussien's ex-wife, Serap, so much? The reason given was her mother-in-law wants her sons to love her and her alone. The idea does not hold water for me as it is the norm in the Middle East to arrange the marriage of their children. If that is the case, at some point of time, her MIL would have agreed to take Serap and Nejla as her Daughters-in-law.

In my opinion, the solution to the problems presented in this book is too simple. Nejla sounds like a Saint.