THE woman sitting in the cafe looks very elegant and poised. She's slowly drinking pale brown tea just like the average person there, and yet her dark, exotic looks mean she'd stand out in any crowd. While this may prompt the odd quick glance, perhaps make people think she's foreign, in Durham City, where this is commonplace, it barely registers at all. That she can live there undisturbed is just why Fadia Faqir likes it.
"I love living in Durham - I'm anonymous here and how great is that?" she asks rhetorically. "I used to teach in Oxford and I had the world at my feet but honestly the North-East can match it and more because it's not pretentious."
To author Fadia, a former lecturer at Durham University, her home environment is vital. She is originally from Jordan but now has lived in the UK for half her life. Her latest novel, My Name Is Salma, concerns displacement - the central character falls pregnant and has to flee from the Levant to live without her child in Britain. It is a fractured sort of life, in which she tries hard to conform but feels her heart is in her homeland. Is this how Fadia once felt?
"Being a foreigner and being on the margins, I sympathise instantly with people who are marginalised," admits the 50-year-old. "If I see an elderly person being badly treated in a hospital, I feel exactly the same as when I see someone being the target of racism. I've been down and out and I've been broken so many times, I understand how hard it is."
Yet Fadia's life in the UK has been predominantly happy. She came to live here as a student. "I came to do an MA in creative writing at Lancaster University," she explains. "I was educated in the English system, so my familiarity with English started very early on, but I didn't think I would end up living in Britain. I hoped that I would end up in one of the universities in England just to be able to breathe the oxygen of academic freedom and get out of a very conservative environment."
Though Jordan is a Muslim country where women don't have equal rights - "It was against the odds for me all the time," says Fadia - she did receive an education. She owes her schooling to her father, who's played a big part in her life. "It was interesting because my father, who was educated by Catholic priests, is a conservative Muslim but at the same time, he believed in education," she says. "There were nine brothers and sisters, including me, and we were all educated by my father - he paid to send us to Britain, the States, Turkey and God knows where. He spent hundreds of thousands on our education."
Yet while he wanted them to learn, he also wanted all his children to live as good obedient Muslims and when Fadia was 18, he deemed her ready to get married. "A man went to my dad and said 'your daughter's hair is a temptation', because I had such long, beautiful hair and it wasn't veiled," she says. "So he wanted me to get married and he used all the kinds of techniques that some Asian families use in Britain - persuasion, carrot and stick, all those kinds of things. I got married very young, at 19, but it didn't work because there wasn't harmony. My father came to my house and took me out."
By this time Fadia was a mother - she'd had a son when she was 20. She fought for custody, but found the Islamic court unsympathetic. "I went to court for eight months - it was horrendous - and then I lost custody when he was 13 months," she recalls. "I wanted a divorce and that was the price I had to pay in a system prejudiced towards men."
She clearly drew on this experience to write of Salma's situation. She may have found the strength to do this but she admits that it was hard. "The novel is a homage to my son," says Fadia. "The loss of custody and subsequently, of contact, was very real and very tough and I can't even talk about it now. I wrote with my nerve ends and it was the most difficult book to write ever. It's taken until now to be able to write it."
What's still a constant source of pain is not being part of her son's life - the separation they endured has caused a deep and lasting rift. Yet much like Salma in the book, and even given all she went through, she won't condemn her mother country. "I go back once a year and it's so important for me psychologically," says Fadia. "Compared to other Arab countries, I would say that Jordan is fairly forward-looking. If there is a problem with the civil courts, it's allowing honour crimes to be committed, and many Jordanians want that changed. If we get rid of that then it would restore Jordan's reputation."
There has been one outstanding benefit from her move to the North-East - her husband Dean comes from Aycliffe village. The pair first met in cyberspace and not long after, fell in love. "We met on the internet and I thought 'he's either totally mad or absolutely fantastic', and he turned out to be probably the best man I know," says Fadia. "We met for a drink and became friends for about six months and then suddenly, things shifted and we wanted to be with each other, and these have been the happiest five years of my life."
Things may be strained with her own son - though Fadia never gives up hope - but she's delighted to be a stepmum to her husband's grown-up daughters. She is a successful as a writer, which is a source of satisfaction, and feels at this point in her life that she can truly be content.
Through Salma's character in the book she sends a message of resilience - despite the problems Salma encounters, she ends up finding her own niche. This clearly resonates with Fadia, who feels that strength comes from within. "I always say that to fall down is not a problem - that's part of life - but you've got to stand up with elegance and pizzazz," she reasons. "The standing up is the important part."
n My Name Is Salma by Fadia Faqir (Doubleday, £12.99).
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