Inspired by a miscellaneous news item, Ben Jelloun chose as The Sand Child’s core the story of a family’s eighth daughter whose father, devoured by shame at having sired exclusively female offspring, decides to raise his yet unborn child as a boy, regardless of its biological sex. The tale of Ahmed’s life unfolds against the backdrop of his ongoing confusion as to his gender identity, which ultimately constitutes his individual identity within his family and society.

Because in traditional Moroccan culture the binary division between maleness and femaleness—the only recognized gender options—is so deeply rooted, with the former finding societal validation and the latter degradation (despite its biological necessity in the scheme of producing male heirs), Ahmed clings to his male identity. However, noting anatomical sexual differences at the female and male hammams as a child, he gradually begins to question his own gender identity. Deeming female secondary sex characteristics that he glimpses at the baths revolting, Ahmed all the while finds himself enraptured by women’s free-flowing language, which he later as a grieving young adult transposes from the hammam’s spoken realm to the written page as a means of self-discovery.

As Ahmed himself matures into a woman, “he” can no longer deny his biological sex, whose secret is never so much as whispered in his household.