I created “The Figurine” in order to reveal the story behind a work of art. The mascot that adorns the hood of every Rolls-Royce car, the iconic little silver sculpture that has symbolized that brand almost since its inception, was inspired by a real woman. Her name was Eleanor Velasco Thornton. Of course my story poem, being a poem, is a work of historical fiction, not a biography or a documentary, since it is filled with embellishments, inaccuracies, flights of fancy and my

About this time last year I was desperately searching for a book. Not just any book, of course, but one that could replace the book choice which I and the other women in our little book club had finally admitted we would never actually read. Six months earlier when we had compiled our list we had all been deeply committed, resolute, enthusiastic and brazenly ambitious. So it is that good intentions pave the road to hell. The closer the deadline came the more we realized that

It was in October 2006 as I was reading the Gulf News that I happened to find out about an auction. An article said that Christie’s was bringing a collection of jewelry to be displayed at the Emirates Towers Hotel for two days. After this brief showing the collection would be packed up and flown to Europe where each piece was to be sold at auction in Geneva three weeks later. Christie’s was English and dealt only in top of the line art and antiques. As far as I knew, this was

What is an epiphany? In the entire English language there may be no word more intriguing. Originating from the Greek epiphainein, to show or reveal, the word has two definitions according to the dictionary. In the first, it is the name of an event in the Christian religion: the moment when Christ was made manifest to the Magi. The other definition, though technically secular, still manages to possess an aura of the divine. According to this second meaning, an epiphany is also