There is nothing to do in the village, a harsh change from Eve’s previous life as a precocious schoolgirl, so she resorts to reading the labels on medications to feed her mind. She learns that her family “sold” her to Adam, witnesses childbirth in the squalid village conditions, and is exposed to female circumcision. The first half of the book is mostly about Eve’s life in the village as a child bride. Eve does eventually learn the local language, but it doesn’t do much for her marriage because her husband is gone for months, even years at a time, leaving her behind with her in-laws in the village.

When they first get married, Eve and her husband don’t even speak the same language so they can’t speak openly to one another. She’s an average British teen, and is completely shocked that her parents would arrange a forced child marriage. When Eve hears the news, she has an asthma attack. After a while, Eve realizes that the family has no plans to return to Britain in fact, her father has arranged for her to marry her uncle’s son, Adam, who is in his twenties. Their vacation destination isn’t a resort or even a hotel in a city, but a desolate village deep in the mountains, with no running water or other necessities. Her parents are from Yemen, but the family lives in Wales Eve has spent her entire life in Britain, and we learn later that her father had been there for forty years.

When the story begins, fourteen-year-old Eve is on family vacation to Yemen. I can usually read a 400-page book in a few days or a week at most, but this story was so sad (especially in this current political climate!) that I had to limit my reading to a few chapters at a time. When a Bulbul Sings is a heartbreaking novel about a woman who was forced into marriage at fourteen years old and her subsequent struggles to obtain a divorce and gain her freedom, which ultimately took over a decade. o you like its sound? They say when a bulbul sings it’s to forget all its problems, because when it sings the sound fills its head with beautiful thoughts so there’s no room left for its worries, but its song can also make people forget their problems too.”

When a Bulbul Sings by Hawaa Ayoub