"when i wrote my first article in the late 1960s, i didn't even dare to sign it in my real name," the author says in the introduction about herself. when i wrote my first novel, i left the heroine's town unnamed, because it was my town. in other words, i had to wait many years before i dared write my autobiography. even when i did so, i did not do it on my own, but because professor elizabeth verna, a well-known american expert on middle east affairs, asked me, in addition to being directed to a foreign audience, to allow me to correct possible preconceptions about islam and muslim women. "