"It was Saturday. I remember. And while he was standing on a step ladder in the hall, changing a light bulb in the faint light coming through the window, I decided to love him." So begins this novel of quixotic adolescent longing and the enduring search for self. Set in middle-class urban Egypt, the story chronicles young Wafaa's struggle to come to terms with her own sexuality and her romantic infatuation with her cousin Ashraf a spoiled and confident young Egyptian who was educated in England. Ashraf's worldliness and carefree attitudes stand in sharp contrast to Wafaa's provincial Islamic piety.
As both mature they find outside events encroaching upon their sheltered lives, forcing each to confront challenges to their youthful ideologies. Ashraf is chastened by an economic turnaround that takes him to the United States as an impoverished immigrant, and Wafaa begins to question the rigid fundamentalist beliefs that seem increasingly inadequate to make sense of the complex world around her.