A leather-bound manuscript is found hidden in a wall of a house in the rubble of Beirut in the late 1970s. It is the diary of a Muslim judge in Ottoman Beirut during 1843-a critical time for the Ottoman Empire and the European powers. The judge is Sheikh 'Abdallah bin Ahmad bin Abu Bakar al-Jabburi to the world, but simply Abu Khalid-father of Khalid-to his family and friends. In a sequence of stories and vignettes the diary tells of his work as a judge, the cases he has to deal with amid the political conspiracies and diplomatic intrigues of the times and the impact they have on his relations with others.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Merchants, officials, family, friends and enemies are threaded in and out of a rich tapestry of events and reflections. A dragoman of the British Consulate seeks his help; Abu Kasim, his lifelong friend, asks for the hand of his unwilling daughter 'Aisha; and a young gypsy girl reads his palm. Subsequent family and political misfortunes change the judge's quiet life and shatter his dream of a pair of red slippers, in a dramatic crescendo with consequences he is unable to control.
