Halabiyah

Aleppo, in the last decades of Ottoman rule. Moise Shama has his father's blue eyes and his place in the family cotton trade. When his family sends him to Manchester, he leaves behind his city and a betrothal to a girl he has only just met. What he can't leave behind is the part of himself that, in his world, would ruin him.Regina marries into the Shamas from the banking families of Damascus — quick, restless, built for a wider life than the one arranged for her. She comes to love her husband, who is gentle and devoted and never entirely hers. Across years and oceans, she pieces together the shape of what he hides.From the souks of Aleppo to the mills of Manchester, the harbor at Port-au-Prince to the streets of Alexandria, the Shamas remake themselves while empires around them shift and come apart. Drawn from the author's own family history, Halabiyah is a novel about a marriage built on secrets and silence — and how much we can love a person we are never permitted to fully know.