The Night of the Mi’raj

A TENSE psychological drama against the backdrop of Saudi Arabian mores, and prescriptive Shari laws, is the setting for Zoe Ferraris’s debut novel, The Night of the Mi’raj. Nouf ash-Shrawi, a beautiful young girl, disappears from her palatial home on an island off Jeddah, in advance of her arranged marriage.

Zoe Ferraris

Abacus; £6.99

Nayir, a Bedouin guide ethnically Palestinian and employed by the Shrawi family, finds her battered and bruised body in a desert wadi. At the influential family’s beckoning, the case is closed and an accidental death recorded. Othman, a Shrawi son and friend of Nayir, enlists his help to solve Nouf’s mysterious death. Nayir teams up with Katya, a forensic pathologist.

So far, it sounds like a sober, Rebus-meets-Kay Scarpetta murder mystery and is formulaic in its laying of clues and unearthing of evidence. But Ferraris manipulates the genre to articulate the nuances of Saudi Arabian culture, and its treatment of women under laws derived from religious texts, to paint a vivid picture of women who capitulate to (as with most of the Shrawi women) and buck against (as with Katya and Nouf herself) the system.

Much as Ferraris skilfully disinters the effect of Saudia Arabian culture on women who must veil themselves and travel to the shops or work (when they are allowed to work) only in the presence of a trusted male escort, she also, through Nayir, examines the effect on men. Ferraris, in her author’s note, explains the book’s title; in Islam, the mi’raj is the second half of a night-time journey during which Mohammed ascends on his winged horse to the heavens. It is a journey of revelation for Mohammed. Ferraris gives an illuminating account of a virtuous man shackled by a religious belief he eventually circumvents for the chance of happiness.