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 Zahiyyas 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 Fanheeshs diaries in search of answers. Alone and afraid, Zahiyya reads excerpts from Amers novel, written from his fathers diaries about living in Zanzibar, where he fell in love with Amers mother, a Zanzibari woman whose absence still haunts him. Weaving between multiple perspectives and stories within stories, the novel explores honestlybut without sensationalizing or self-Orientalizingthe anti-Blackness that has endured in the Arab world and elsewhere.