In her thirties she marries and feeling more secure she travels back to her family, dressing herself as a foreigner to lessen the risk of being recognised, as she traces her daughter. After a long time, seven years, she is helped by nuns to escape and eventually ends up in Exeter, in England. But the men have long memories and when friends of hers leave the prison they are shot dead as soon as they exit. When the girl discovers she is pregnant she is sent to a very rough and crude prison for her own safety, because there her father and brother cannot kill her to avenge their 'honour'. The country isn't named but since the girl is a Bedouin it's probably Lebanon or close by. Her child is adopted and forever leaves a hole in her heart and despite all attempts to make a new life for herself abroad she is always drawn back to the nasty, backward, prejudiced, wicked family and country of her past. The story is of a young woman who falls for a man and gets pregnant and then he leaves her. But just as things settle, the need to return for her lost daughter overwhelms her, and one fateful day, Salma risks everything to go back and find her. She learns English customs from her landlady and befriends a Pakistani girl who is also on the run, with whose help Salma finally forges a new identity. Away from her Bedouin village, Salma is an asylum-seeker trying to melt into the crowd, under pressure to reassess her way of life. Salma is rushed into protective custody where her newborn is ripped from her arms, and where she sits alone for years before being ushered to safety in England. Despite the insult it would commit against her people, Salma has the child and suddenly finds herself a fugitive on the run from those seeking to restore their honor. Salma has committed a crime punishable by death in her Bedouin tribe of Hima, Levant: she had sex out of wedlock and became pregnant. Timely and lyrical, The Cry of the Dove is the story of one young woman and an evocative portrait of forbidden love and violated honor in a culture whose reverberations are felt profoundly in our world today.

The Cry of the Dove by Fadia Faqir