The Things I Would Tell You edited by Sabrina Mahfouz

‘Woman like no one is ever going to read you. Woman like you have everything to say.’

In The Things I Would Tell You, edited by Sabrina Mahfouz, British Muslim women write. It is a vibrant collection on everything from Islamic Tinder to friendship, from desire to religion, from war to representation; ‘an alternative to the current homogenous narrative of British Muslim identity’. Each piece chips away at this monolith, which shatters into a thousand shimmering shards.

Muslim women’s bodies are a battleground of competing definitions but in these pages women write their own. Ahdaf Soueif’s Mezzaterra lances skewed perceptions and exposes political motivations behind the Western misrepresentation of Muslims. In Imtiaz Dharker’s The Right Word, outside is a ‘terrorist’, ‘freedom fighter’, ‘a child who looks like mine’ – she asks, ‘Are words no more than waving, wavering flags?’. In Uomini Cadranno, Seema Begum questions: ‘Tell me if in this endless cold, endless storm, endless torture, endless war, endless genocide, a sweet beauty will blossom from the seeds of this’.

It is time to listen – truth be told, it is long past time. Hibaq Osman writes, ‘you are lucky/ to be able to detach yourself from stories like this, to enter and exit conversations as you wish’. At times sensual, humorous, piercing and heartbreaking, The Things I Would Tell You is an absorbing read. It is also important, and never more relevant than now.