Letters to the Homeland: An Accurate Translation of an Intimate Voice

After growing up in Zanzibar as part of the ruling Omani Sultanate, Sayyida Salme, the daughter of the Sultan and his surie concubine Djilfidan, took a fateful step that shaped the rest of her life. She could not have imagined what challenges lay ahead. When she chose to follow her love and became Emily Ruete, she found herself on a path to self-exile, as she moved from East to West, South to North. Taking on a new culture, language, faith, even identity, she crossed borders only to find new barriers. And yet, she persisted, raising her children in Germany, this foreign land, defying norms and expectations. Above all, she stayed true to herself.

Letters to the Homeland is a true story of an extraordinary life in the nineteenth century. Now, generations later, her great-great-granddaughter has produced an accurate translation of the author’s own private manuscript. In a highly personal account that reveals struggles, anguish, fears, and faith, we encounter a life of adversity, rife with contrasts and constraints. We also see the power of self-expression from the self-taught power of the author’s pen.

As with Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, which the author published in 1886 and which is also newly translated in a companion book, readers can be inspired by observations and insights that still resonate today. Indeed, Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete was so far ahead of her time that we, in the twenty-first century, can understand and appreciate her choices and convictions better than her contemporaries could.

Let history surprise you; let her story inspire you - let her authentic voice speak to you.