There is a romantic novel written by a Cairo scholar said to have made a multi-million fortune in royalties throughout the Muslim world, called Ayat-Ayat Cinta, which is about a man pursued by several women but who marries just one of them
Anyone considering a sequel might do worse than base it around the love story which has swirled around the summit of world squash. It is improbable enough to sound like a work of imagination. But it's true, and it goes something like this.
The Truly Great Player from Cairo had been the best in the world for a whole year and was well on the way to dominating a second. His deserving and overlooked compatriot, unlucky with injuries and sometimes too tense to produce his best, had been in his shadow for even longer than this.
So long in fact, it seemed likely to continue for the rest of his days. But, hey-ho, he met a beautiful - and equally talented – young lady. They had fallen in love some time previously, but all too often they were dragged apart by their work, for painstaking, difficult months.
Then she unselfishly agreed to subsume her career to his, and they married - and everything changed more dramatically than anyone could have imagined.
The wedding took place in December 2007, and by January his performances were already improving. The Truly Great Player still tended to dominate, and by October had been World No.1 for thirty months, and though the deserving one was up two places he was still no higher than six.
Then suddenly, almost as though a play were nearing its curtain and the good fairy needed to wave a wand to ensure the departing audience a feel-good ending, the deserving one beat the Truly Great Player for the first time in a completed match.
It earned him his first Super Series title, and it was a huge breakthrough. Lo and behold, he repeated the win two months later in the last tournament of the year, and joyfully advanced to win the richest tournament ever.
The deserving one took $37,000 home to his beloved and with it, amazingly, the accolade of World No.1. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he said.
He is of course Karim Darwish, and the truly great player is Amr Shabana – no longer needing the parody capitals as in real life he is truly great – while the lady in this entertaining Egyptian triptych is Engy Kheirullah.
We may need reminding that she is more than just the love interest. Despite Kheirullah's focus on their home, she has somehow been able to compete at a sufficiently high level to take away the World Team Championship title from England, winning the decider in the final in Cairo in October.
There were of course other reasons for Darwish's improvement. He had an influential coach in Amir Wagih. He enjoyed better luck. And he himself deserved credit, summoning the tenacity to overcome setbacks, finding the intelligence to make more of his game, and improving his temperament sufficiently to take better advantage of belated opportunities.
Darwish also experienced immense desire: it shone from his eyes like a 240-watt bulb as he held aloft the portcullis-racket on a castle-plinth trophy on his great day, December 19. That was a magical night in Al-Khobar, the multi-ethnic Saudi city of shopkeepers and merchants, of malls and boulevards - and now, in a sudden new era, of world-beaters.
Despite this, it was the less showy benefits of stability, continuity, emotional support and social maturity - to translate the romance into something routine – which were crucial for Darwish.
Shortly after their wedding Kheirullah said: “I think it's much easier when you are settled down, and you are not in a transition phase.
“Karim tends to keep blaming himself. He's not an extremely good loser, which is not a good thing. He needs to move on.
“He likes to stay alone and not talking to anyone and really thinking about a match. He stresses himself a lot. But he was much worse before. Now he is loosening up a bit more.”
He has since lost it more. Darwish explains: “I used to play really well in training matches, relaxed and confident: I used to beat everyone.
“But in tournaments I was a bit tense, a bit nervous. Now I'm just trying to play matches as I play in training. I've tried to be relaxed in tournaments - and it's worked.”
It might have worked sooner than it did. Darwish was unlucky not to get past David Palmer in the semi-finals of the British Open at Liverpool in May, suffering a freak ankle injury when he appeared to be on top, discovering the ailment only after being ordered from the court to clean blood from a cut.
It forced him to retire and Palmer went on to become British Open Champion, when it might have been Darwish. Not till a month later was he was back in action and not till late summer was he able to make another push.
But by October he had closed on the leaders, reaching the final of the World Open in Manchester. He had looked as though he might even have captured the title after taking the first game against Ramy Ashour, using short-swing flicks with great deception.
But Ashour was superb and Darwish was both disappointed and pleased with his performances. “I really wanted to win that final - and after I didn't, I thought I had to do something special,” he said.
He decided that reaching World No.1 by the end of the year was still possible. The best way, he reckoned, was to beat the incumbent, Shabana, who had a large number of ranking points to defend from a sequence of title triumphs during the closing months of 2007.
Sure enough, Darwish captured his first Super Series title at the Qatar Classic, overwhelming Shabana 11-4 11-5 11-3 in the final, and followed it less than two months later at the Saudi International by beating him again, in a four-game quarter-final. This meant that almost exactly a year after getting married, he was sure of taking the number one spot by the start of 2009.
Many people were amazed. A plethora of factors had come together to make it possible. But the first he mentions is nearly always his wedding.
“I got married in December, and everything was great for me. I am now with my wife and family and I have a very big house. I feel settled down,” he said.
“It means I am concentrated on squash training. And I became more mature. All these things are important. I have been more relaxed and more confident on court. It has helped a lot.”
Sports psychology and physiology have become widely developed and complex scientific professions. But the basis of Darwish's world-beating science has been the most simple and easily understood emotion.