A young woman's search for connection with her estranged father, her family's past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit
"Mai Serhan's writing is unique, sincere, dark, funny, and cuttingly tragic."—Selma Dabbagh
Mai Serhan was born in 1977 and has never been to Palestine, the country from which her father was expelled in 1948. She lives in Cairo with her Egyptian mother. Her distant and troubled father runs a mysterious business empire in China, and when he calls to tell her he doesn't have long to live, she joins him in the hope of learning his trade and of finally getting close to him.
Mai soon finds herself totally at sea: traversing across a country as big as a continent, and as alien to her as her father. The ghosts of his past life come to haunt them both. They come with violence, with grief, bringing forth a tragic death, and a whole new meaning to the word erasure.
Told in a narrative as befitting the splintered and disordered existence of exile over generations, this rich memoir spans Egypt and Lebanon to Dubai to China. It is filled with bitter tragedy and loss, but also woven throughout with an understated humor and much grace.