Woven through my new novel is a passionate, sensual love story between my protagonist, Amalia, and Jamil, a Muslim poet and courtier. Now an old woman, Amalia feels the spirit of her now dead lover visiting her:



My body is too old and dry to waken as it once did at the thought of Jamil, but the hair on my arms rises so quickly I can almost hear it crackle as he comes up behind me.
“You’re here,” I whisper.
“Habibi,” he says. “Yes, my love.”
I rise to my feet, my heart aching with joy and sorrow. “I was hoping you might still be alive,” I say as his arms envelop me. “I wrote to your wife to ask, but she didn’t answer.”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. Only the spirits of the dead can visit the living, and I knew the moment I sensed his presence in this room that he did not survive the last days of the Christian siege of Granada. Though ashamed of my selfishness, I am glad he is here.
“Your family too?” I whisper.
“Two of my granddaughters jumped from a tower to avoid being touched by Ferdinand and Isabella’s soldiers. The rest--”
It feels as if all the air in the room has been let out in one desolate sigh. “The poor had little to eat during the siege, and once disease found a ready supply of new victims among them, it found it had a taste for the rich as well. My wife....” He is silent for a moment. “I loved her, Amalia. She was a good woman.”
Tears spring to my eyes. “And your sons?”
“ Both dead.”
Ahmad. My heart floods with memories, and the cracks in the skin of my face sting with tears. The room hums with silence, as if some barely heard music has died.
“Allah in His mercy made me welcome death.” His breath is hot on my shoulders. “I am at peace now. I came to comfort you.”
The skin on my back prickles like a puff of breeze passing over water. “You are always here,” I whisper. “My love for you is written in my bones.”
[…] His finger is on my lips, stopping me from going on. “I would have found you,” he replies. “Didn’t you feel it in the air the day we met? The inevitability of it?”
I remember getting up, my book falling from my lap, as if I had just caught sight of someone long delayed for whom I had been keeping watch. “I was waiting for you.” I whisper.
“And I came. Perhaps your sighs were carried on the breeze to Granada and I heard you calling.” He teases the laces on my dress and I look down to see they are untied. “You told me to come, and I did.”
The brush of his lips on mine is as soft as the toes of angels dancing. “The barriers in life are false,” he whispers. “We have always been together, even before we met. Then, now, and forever, I am with you.”