Beginner’s Pluck
Daughter of a Palestinian father and an English mother, Selma spent her teenage years in Kuwait. After university she went to Cairo, then the West Bank, working for human rights organisations. Then she did a Masters in England, met the man she married, and went with him to Bahrain.
“I’d spent my twenties connected to Palestinian politics, and Bahrain was a bland corporate world. I had my children there, but I could only work in banking or telecoms. All these terrible things were happening in Palestine, and I wasn’t involved. That’s when I started writing. I felt, this is something I can do. I can present the Palestinian world to an English-speaking reader.”
