There is a simplicity to Mirage, this story of star-crossed lovers whose brief happiness is cut short, that belies the skill of its telling. Set in a closed Arab kingdom in our own time, it has the timeless appeal and delicacy of a fairy tale, yet also the moral weight and all the human sadness of a novel by Thomas Hardy. It tells how Sayeed, a good but unexceptional Muslim, finds happiness with Latifa, a girl who might have been beyond his reach had widowhood and misfortune not brought her within it. The scene for Sayeed's marriage is set with unpretending tenderness and in unerring detail: the city hospital where he works, the shanty town where he lives, his brother's desert home, the peasant wedding, the struggle to make a decent life for his new wife and her child.
