Outside, singers and well-wishers lined the halls. My mother held one hand, Maram the other, and behind us were my brothers and father. I would have to traverse the length of the palace to the celebration chamber, where only those known to us and the crown would be allowed. I thought of the girl I’d been when I first entered the Ziyaana, the girl I’d become during my time there. I thought of the Amani who had suffered being Maram’s proxy to the man she loved, who had walked a similar path laden in someone else’s jewels surrounded by strangers. She had not imagined a new world; certainly, she hadn’t imagined a world where her marriage would signal the rise of a new age.

The doors to the celebration chamber finally loomed over me and opened. And there was Idris standing on the wedding dais, flanked by his aunt Naima and his cousin Fouad. Our eyes met and he smiled as if a revelation had come down to him. I reached a hand out to him, he took it, and I felt the rest of the world fall away.

Like the first wedding I’d participated in, I didn’t remember very much. I remembered Idris, his hand covering mine. I remembered the flash of lights from the journalist’s probe and a table being set before us. I remembered signing my name—mine, not Maram’s—on the wedding contract, and Idris lifting that same hand to his mouth and kissing it in front of all of creation. But eventually the formalities passed and the singing began. Food was brought out to the guests and a space on the floor was cleared. I sat beside Idris in the place of honor, our hands entwined, and looked out over our guests.

We had not passed so far from our time of conquest that their forms of dancing had disappeared too; several couples were on the floor. Buchra and Tariq. ‘Imad and a girl from Palalogea. And Maram and Aghraas.

Aghraas cut a handsome figure—taller than most men in the room, robed like one of the Tazalghit in maroon and black, her braids hanging free around her shoulders. She held Maram as if she were the most important person in the world, and her eyes never strayed from her face, nor Maram’s from Aghraas’s. I saw some of the elders watch them in the same way they had watched Idris and me, content with the understanding of how life could unfold for the truly happy who’d found their other half. Maram, rather than dressing in the Ziyadi colors, had dressed to complement Aghraas, and the image they made as they swept across the dance floor was striking and romantic.