When her uncle’s travel agency business declines, the aunt and uncle move but Najwa continues to work as a maid for other Muslim families. They have a brief affair but it does not last. At the same time, there has been another coup and Anwar is now in London. She goes to work for her uncle’s travel agency but when her aunt requires assistance for a party, Najwa goes and helps and remains helping her, effectively becoming a full-time maid. We learn that she does not do well at her studies. Much of this information is picked up gradually as Aboulela does not tell the story in chronological order but jumps backwards and forwards. Omar turns to drugs and is arrested and imprisoned. At first they have money but then the great riches that their father is thought to have do not materialise and the family struggles.

Najwa, Omar and their mother flee to London. Her father is arrested and later executed for corruption. Her friends are as well off as she is, though she does meet a fellow student, Anwar, a man of left-wing views and becomes somewhat friendly with him.

She and her twin brother Omar are studying at the University of Khartoum. Her mother is well off and her father holds some senior, though somewhat shady position, connected with the President. She comes from a well-to-do Sudanese family. Leila Aboulela’s second novel tells the story of Najwa. Written with directness and force, Minaret is a lyric and insightful audiobook about Islam and an alluring glimpse into a culture Westerners are only just beginning to understand.Home » Sudan » Leila Aboulela » Minaret Leila Aboulela: Minaret They find a common bond in faith and slowly, silently, begin to fall in love. Then Najwa meets Tamer, the intense, lonely younger brother of her employer. Soon orphaned, she finds solace and companionship within the Muslim community. But a coup forces the young woman and her family into political exile in London. An upper-class Westernized Sudanese, her dreams were to marry well and raise a family. Twenty years ago, Najwa, then at university in Khartoum, would never have imagined that one day she would be a maid. With her Muslim hijab and downturned gaze, Najwa is invisible to most eyes, especially to the rich families whose houses she cleans in London. Leila Aboulela's American debut is a provocative, timely, and engaging audiobook about a young Muslim woman - once privileged and secular in her native land and now impoverished in London - gradually embracing her orthodox faith.

Minaret by Leila Aboulela