The North Carolina Literary Festival was last weekend: three glorious Fall days on the gorgeous UNC campus in Chapel Hill, with keynote speakers John Grisham (practiced), Kathy Reichs (hilarious), Anna Deveare Smith (mesmerizing), Elisabeth Strout (cool and low-key), on top of readings, musical performance and author receptions at which the household names and the hopefuls mingled. My own latest book, Love is Like Water, arrived literally on the eve of the festival, so it was launched at my reading on Sunday morning. Sunday morning is a notoriously tricky time-slot in the church-going South, but my friends, bless them, showed up in force. And that was a good thing, because it was also my launch as a North Carolina author. I've called the state home now for twenty years, and that is as long as I've lived in Egypt, and much longer than I've lived anywhere else. But although I wrote my novels while living in Chapel Hill, I wrote about Egypt, about London, about France, about the frozen north of the U.S., about Boston- about anywhere but North Carolina. It was my quotidian but not part of my imaginary; some essential sense of distance or perspective was missing. In Love is Like Water, I finally write about the South, and so I am now a North Carolina writer in the complete sense of the world. The later chapters of the book are set in Chapel Hill, and the last three I wrote- sometimes in one sitting- in the weeks immediately following 9/11. I found it surprisingly difficult to talk about those chapters at the book reading, even so many years later, even with so many friendly faces in the audience.
The next festival will be in two years time; but I wonder if I will be on the same program as John Grisham again. His daughter just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, and his wife is graduating this year, so perhaps it won't be as easy to lure him down here next time around...

Thrilled that copies of my latest book, Love is Like Water, just arrived, in the nick of time for my reading tomorrow at the North Carolina Literary Festival at UNC-Chapel Hill!

President Obama hosted an iftar, the breaking of the fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, for ambassadors of Muslim countries, a few cabinet and congressional figures, and some members of the American Muslim community. But then, so did George W. Bush for all eight years of his administration. President Obama's was politically significant though for two things: he honored an American schoolgirl who won the right to wear hijab (a headscarf), affirming America's freedom of religious practice in contrast to France's banning of the headscarf in schools and discrimination against the niqab (face veil) in public.
The other thing I found remarkable was a description of the menu listed on the a website that tracks the Obama's White House meals: the iftar started with dates and nuts, then salad, chicken with potato-leek puree- but no mention of dessert! What, no baklava or konafa? Or my favorite Om Ali? I hope it was just an oversight of the website, not the kitchen.