£8.03
About Face
The Story of a Pregnant Muslim Girl
Introduction
The island of Cyprus is a divided country in the eastern Mediterranean that gained its independence from Great Britain in 1960. Since 1974, the north part of the island is occupied by Turkey and the people there are Muslim. The southern part is still an independent sovereign country, member of the EU and the United Nations, with most people in the southern part being Christian Greek Orthodox. Many people from both the north and the south leave the country to further their studies abroad.
The Main Character
A 23-year-old Muslim doctor leaves her family in Cyprus and comes to the USA on a scholarship to study pediatrics with the intention to go back home to help children. She has never traveled beyond Turkey, where she had gone to medical school.
Conflict and Crisis
In the US, she meets a Jewish doctor and falls in love. She finds herself pregnant and decides to tell him the happy news over dinner at a restaurant they had gone to many times. However, before she can tell him the news, two masked men enter the restaurant and open fire. Her boyfriend is seriously wounded, but she manages to escape unharmed. She finds herself lost in a vast unknown country trying to survive. Where should she go to hide? She doesn't know more than a few people at the hospital she works at.
Her Journey
While her boyfriend is fighting for his life in the operating room, she decides to leave her known surroundings of her hospital in Chicago and tries to find a nurse friend in Wisconsin. Honor killing is a serious threat from her father and her uncle. She also fears the people at her mosque in Chicago may be after her too. She has few friends and she doesn't want to put them in danger.
Escalating Threats
Her fears escalate when she finds out her brother and then her father have come to the United States, looking to take her back home. Tension rises further when her uncle hires an assassin to go after her too.
