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Excerpt for Feedback from my PNR WIP
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.... Hej! I'd love comments on this short excerpt from my novel, 'While the Sands Whisper.' 
Excerpt from Chapter 10: Other Women
.... It was at a public shower many years ago, on the beach in Nueiba, where I first met Annika. I thought she must be a tourist; her smooth body was perfectly bronze. But then she slipped on the long, black dress of a Bedouin woman. I looked into the broken mirror of the shower and stole an extra glance at her light Swedish features. She was applying powdery kohl to her intuitive eyes, and after, covered her face again with her sheer, dark burqa.
During those first years, Annika often went to a secluded part of the beach to sunbathe in the nude. I never found out where her secret beach was, but if she had been caught, she would have been thrown out of Sinai, where probing eyes are everywhere.
Nudity is strictly forbidden in Egypt, and unheard of for a Bedouin woman here in Sinai. But Annika had grown up as a Scandinavian, and nudity is considered the most natural thing in the world. I respected her for refusing to put an end to her own traditions for the sake of her new identity.
That day; it must have been back in ‘82, she invited me to visit her home. By that time Annika had already married Rashid, a striking Bedouin from the Muzeina tribe. Men such as Rashid are incredibly charismatic in their abaya robes—irresistible, mysterious nomads. Many a foreign women has been carried away by such spellbinding men. But few of these women stay in Sinai, and even fewer dare to marry a Bedouin. But Annika is one of these women, and her life hasn’t been easy.
Through the years, I have often visited her and Rashid. I’ve come to know them as one of the few interracial married couples living in Sinai. I enter the tiny back-shack kitchen. “How’s it going, Annika?
But without having to hear one word from her, I can see Exactly how it’s going.
Her grayish-blond hair peeks out from under her black scarf; her astounding blue eyes meet mine. Annika has aged drastically since the last time we met; there are circles under her eyes and wrinkles line her cheekbones. She seems beyond exhaustion, camouflaging her hands behind her back, concealing the parched, rough skin and jagged nails while she tries to scrape away the dirt...'
It's a tad on the long side so I posted it on my blog.
http://skyswriting.blogspot.com/2013/...