An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds: Memoirs, Letters Home, Sequels to the Memoirs, Syrian Customs and Usages, by Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete.

• Author: Malti-Douglas, Fedwa

Rarely is a reviewer so fortunate as to receive a book which is such sheer pleasure to read. Richly illustrated, beautifully produced, the fascinating story of Sayyida Salme, alias Emily Ruete, receives its just due in this volume. A Muslim princess of Oman and Zanzibar, Sayyida Salme converted to Christianity, adopted the Western name "Emily," and lived with her husband, Rudolph Heinrich Ruete, in Germany. But Salme/Emily would spend her life between the culture of the East and that of the West, as she moved between Zanzibar, Europe, and the Middle East.

This volume, meticulously edited by E. van Donzel, is a treasure trove that contains different sorts of documents. Had it only been the lengthy and detailed introduction by van Donzel, the volume would be worth reading. The introduction sets the text and its major characters in historical and cultural context. To this introduction have been added Salme/Emily's memoirs as well as her personal letters and other documents.

Salme/Emily modestly claims to have initially penned her memoirs for the sake of her Westernized children. This first-person autobiographical narrative follows the protagonist from her birth through her childhood, into her adult years. The actual story has all the makings of an incredible adventure - a cross-cultural love story in which the heroine escapes her traditional upbringing, her family, and her home country to be with her beloved.

The fact that the author of the memoirs lived between cultures translates itself in the text into a comparative perspective. Salme is not happy simply commenting on customs and social mores in "the Orient" (her phrase). She intercalates comments on Europe, drawing at times sharp comparisons between Europe and the Orient. For this, the letters are as significant as the memoirs.

Salme/Emily is at once an engaging and an elusive narrator. Her textual journey is more than simply a set of memoiristic (for one can see the letters in this way as well) flourishes that keep the reader's feet firmly planted in the nineteenth century. This narrative of an Arabian princess strangely enough has the ability to insert itself into many of the contemporary debates on the Muslim world both in the East and the West. What is the status of women in "the Orient" versus that in the West? Do men beat their wives (a recent e-mail on the...