When Emirati author Maryam Al Mur first walked into a publisher’s office, she was not trying to become a novelist. She had taken along a small book of her poetry and prose and wanted to have it published.
Instead, the publisher told her that people would not buy it [poetry and prose] and challenged her to write a novel. “I said: ‘Me? Write a novel?’” Al Mur recalled, laughing. The remark stayed with her. She took up the challenge and wrote ‘Ghabat Salama’, a novel based on a traditional Gulf tale she had known since childhood.
That first novel eventually went through successive editions and set her on a literary path that has since seen her turn Emirati folklore, old expressions and stories passed down through generations into contemporary fiction.
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Her latest novel, ‘Talhouga’, published in 2025, continues that approach, bringing together stories that move between the past and present and exploring how old beliefs and experiences can be reimagined in modern settings. The title itself carries a piece of heritage.
What does ‘talhouga’ mean?
Al Mur said “talhouga” refers to a small gold ornament traditionally attached to or woven into the end of women’s braids. She showed the ornament at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, explaining how older women would wear it and how different women had their own versions.
The word also conveys the idea of following, continuity and things remaining connected, which, she said, reflects the book itself — a collection of stories linked across the past and present. “One thing leads to another,” she said.
In one chapter, Al Mur draws on an old belief surrounding what people called “Koir Al Jin”, a powerful swirling phenomenon in the sea that, before its causes were understood, could be attributed to the jinn.
She takes the old belief and builds a fictional story around it, while elsewhere bringing in subjects that would have been impossible to imagine in older generations, including hackers.
The result is deliberately neither a historical retelling nor a purely contemporary novel. “It is the same things, but in another framework,” she said.
That is also how Al Mur approached ‘Ghabat Salama’. The story grew out of a traditional tale associated with the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, in which Salama and her daughters were linked in folklore to dangerous waters and whirlpools.
The original story was one of the tales told by older generations, but Al Mur did not simply reproduce it. She took the basic concept, added characters and events and built a modern narrative around it.
The novel is also an example of how she uses traditional stories to explore contemporary questions, particularly those affecting women. Al Mur said one reader told her she had read the novel three times because it gave her “energy” — a sense of inner strength when dealing with feelings of weakness, humiliation or a difficult relationship.
Readers outside the UAE
Her books have also found readers outside the UAE.
Al Mur recalled an Iraqi father buying one of her Emirati-dialect novels for his school-age son, initially wondering how the boy would understand the language. The father told her that his son enjoyed listening to Emirati speech. He later told her the boy had finished the book and enjoyed it.
At the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, another reader waiting for Al Mur to autograph his copy of “Talhouga” told Khaleej Times that he had read the novel several times and said it was a bestseller in Dubai.
Al Mur herself said “Talhouga” had made it into the top five best-selling books at Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore chain, in the UAE.
She said the ranking meant something to her because, as she put it, “they don’t humour anyone”, making the recognition particularly satisfying to her.
“Talhouga” is written in Emirati colloquial Arabic, unlike her other works, which use Modern Standard Arabic.
What’s special about Al Mur’s books?
Al Mur’s books draw heavily on elements of Emirati heritage, including oral stories, expressions, customs and the social world of earlier generations.
She said she often finds herself wondering what her own life would have been like had she lived in her grandmother’s time. “Would I have been Maryam?” she asked herself. “Or would I have been a different character? Would I have been peaceful and kind, or isolated?”
Those questions feed into her fiction. Her interest in the past is not, however, about reproducing it exactly.
Al Mur said she researches the historical circumstances around the stories she uses before adding her own fictional elements.
For a story involving a tornado, for instance, she said she goes back to the relevant year, checks where Emirati students might have been studying abroad and researches what was happening in the place at the time before building her fictional narrative.
The same approach applies to stories involving old Gulf communities and figures.
Her journey from poetry to novels
‘Talhouga’ is her fourth novel, following ‘Ghabat Salama’, ‘Hob Al Siba’ and ‘Majaed Majaed: Ikhwan Shamma’.
The journey from poetry to four novels was not something she had originally planned. After that first publisher told her to try a novel, Al Mur said the comment effectively planted an idea in her head.
“I went home and wrote ‘Ghabat Salama’.”
She later returned to the same publisher. However, the response this time was very different.
“We made a second edition, then a third.”
Al Mur is now working on another novel, which she hopes to release at the Sharjah International Book Fair.
For her, the appeal of the old stories is not simply nostalgia.
They provide raw material that can be reshaped for new generations, allowing readers who never lived that world to encounter its language, beliefs and characters in a contemporary form.
Source: Khaleej Times
