Bird Summons

Hoopoe is a spiritual teacher who imparts ancient wisdom and guidance. But his powers are limited. The women must make their own choices. Away from the city – with its restrictions, formality and rituals, both religious and secular – the spiritual freedom that the women encounter is vast and beyond control.

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to my brilliant and gallant editor Elisabeth Schmitz. And to the team at Grove—Kaitlin Astrella, Amy Hundley, Katie Raissian, and Deb Seager. It is a blessing to have such supportive publishers.
My gratitude to my wonderful editor at W&N, Jennifer Kerslake, for the emails that made me happy as well as the times I was challenged.
Thanks to Arzu Tahsin, Matthew Cowdery and everyone at Weidenfeld & Nicolson who has made this book possible.
Continued thanks to Stephanie Cabot, my agent for over twenty years.
Thank you to Vimbai Shire and Ellen Goodson Coughtrey for invaluable feedback on the first draft.
And to Todd McEwen and Lucy Ellmann for believing in this novel, for their help and understanding.
I am grateful to William Facey and to Angus Sladen for permission to quote, in Chapter 4 and elsewhere, from Pilgrimage to Mecca by Lady Evelyn Cobbold. And to Anthony Cobbold for help with information about reaching her grave.
For the Hoopoe’s stories, I am mainly grateful to the following sources:
– Aberdeenshire Folk Tales by Grace Banks & Sheena Blackhall
– Rumi’s Tales of Mystic Meaning by Reynold A. Nicholson
– The Un-discovered Islands: An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes by Malachy Tallack
– Kalila wa Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal by Ramsay Wood with an Introduction by Doris Lessing
– I very much appreciated Sholeh Wolpé’s modern and accessible translation of Attar’s The Conference of the Birds and the detailed notes in Peter Avery’s translation.
Thank you, Nadir, for walking by my side to Lady Evelyn’s grave.