"The poems of Tea in Heliopolis form the story of a family, sometimes
tragic, sometimes searingly beautiful, and always exotic, seen through
the eyes of a painter. The trope of life, as moments flowing from the
paintbrush wielded skillfully by a poet, allows Hedy Habra to capture
details redolent of old masters, exquisite and visceral, and creates her
remembered world with the wild imagination and color of a Van Gogh.
Moving through life in Egypt, to Beirut, then to America, with a kind of
post-Newtonian sense of everything happening simultaneously, the
chronicle captures the bravery it takes to remember and yet experience a
beauty transcendent to pain. This is a remarkable book of poetry."
-Diane Wakowski, author of Emerald Ice