Jessica Jiji – författare

If her old-fashioned family had never left Morocco, Michelle Benamou would have been in big trouble, being almost thirty and nowhere near married. Luckily, in the hardy multicultural stew of New York City, she''s been able to follow her other dreams, working her way up from broadcast news producer to on-air reporter. Still, there''s something sparkly missing from the ring finger of her left hand. . .

Michelle thinks maybe her sexy, ex-Marine boyfriend can provide it -- until Joe abruptly tells her adios. Her old friend Benny from the Bronx is an intriguing possibility -- but he''s out in L.A. . . . and not quite divorced.

It''s tough for a sexy, very modern urban woman to follow the traditional calls of the marriage muezzins to matrimony -- especially when the rest of her life starts racing rapidly downhill. Suddenly in desperate need of an affordable new Manhattan apartment (an oxymoron), and quite possibly a new career (a catastrophe), Michelle''s got other worries besides finding passionate love sealed with an "I do."

But a diamond is just coal, after all, until it''s forged by fire and time. And sometimes something precious, strong, dazzling, and enduring can turn up when you least expect it . . .

Just when her family should be arranging her marriage, Kathmiya Mahmoud, a young Marsh Arab maiden, is sent from her home in Iraq''s idyllic countryside to the unfamiliar city of Basra, where she must survive on her paltry earnings as a servant. Her only asset—her exquisite beauty—brings more peril than peace. Worse, her mother appears to be keeping a secret about her own mysterious past, one that could threaten Kathmiya''s destiny forever.

In this lost Iraq of the 1940s, a time of rich traditions and converging worlds, Kathmiya meets Shafiq, a Jewish boy whose brotherhood with his Muslim neighbor Omar proves that religion is no barrier to friendship. But in a world where loss of honor is punishable by death, the closeness that grows between Kathmiya and Shafiq becomes dangerous as a doomed love takes root. When British warplanes begin bombing Iraq and the country''s long-simmering tensions explode, the power of an unbreakable boyhood bond and a transcendent love must overcome the deepening fractures of a collapsing society.

Set during the tumultuous years surrounding the Second World War, Sweet Dates in Basra is the redemptive story of two very different cultures, and a powerful reminder that no walls can confine the human spirit.