Tasneem Jamal was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. She has worked as a journalist for over a decade as an editor at The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night magazine and the National Post. She has written fiction and non-fiction for the Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night magazine, the National Post and the Literary Review of Canada. She lives in Kitchener with her husband and two daughters.
The central characters in Where the Air Is Sweet are Ismaili Muslims.
Late in the 19th century the British Empire began recruiting labour from the Indian subcontinent to construct a railway connecting the Indian Ocean with the East African interior. Large numbers of Ismailis, along with other South Asians, travelled to East Africa. Once the railway was completed, many stayed on, and many of these opened shops. They quickly distinguished themselves as a sizable merchant class in much of Africa.
Ismailimail 