“Come now. With some shrewd bargaining, inshallah, you’ll make enough to patch your roof. Or is it the hot water that needs fixing? I’m sure your father would want you comfortable.”

“You think so?” Rania rubbed at an inch-long scar on her thumb, a smooth line the color of pearl. “My father always put honor higher than his daughter’s wishes.”

Adnan frowned, but his eyes were kind.

“Shall I come with you?”

Rania enveloped his knotted, arthritic hands in hers.

“Thank you, Professor, but I need to do this myself.”

* * *

The bookseller hollered for his apprentice. His raspy call was muffled by ten thousand books. They were stuffed into bookcases that stretched fifteen feet to the wood-paneled ceiling, stacked on top of tables, and packed in crates on the floor. More were jammed into windowsills where they blocked all but the sun’s most determined rays. Dust motes twirled beneath a neglected chandelier.

“That boy is never to be found when I need him.” The bookseller pushed his chair away from his desk. “Please, relax while I fetch more tea to mark our deal.”

Rania waited in silence as he waddled from his musty den. He’s probably gone out back to dance the dabke, she thought morosely as she tucked her payment into her pocket. Her nose twitched at the vanilla-and-mold scent of old glue, ink, and paper slowly decomposing.

A floorboard groaned behind her, on the far side of the bookseller’s front door. Silence followed. Whispers. A gentle knock. A young woman inched through the doorway. Her long dark hair could have belonged to an Iraqi, but her skin was far too pale, like Snow White’s.

“Is this al-Kitab bookstore?” the young woman said in halting Arabic.

A tall man slipped in behind her. From his freckles and sun-bleached hair, Rania would have guessed he was a surfer from California. But, of course, that was impossible. Americans had been banned from Iraq for over a decade.

“Come in,” Rania decided to answer in English. Like many Iraqis of her class and era, she’d attended college in Britain and spoke with a slight Oxford accent. If that didn’t work, she could always switch to her passable French. “You’re at the right place.”

At Rania’s answer, the young woman’s eyes lit up. They were an unusually vivid blue—the same color as Fatima’s amulet, the charm used to ward off evil designs—and they seemed to double in size as they darted over the jumbled tabletops and scaled the library ladders resting in their rails.

“This is amazing.” The young woman began to spin in a slow circle. “Your bookstore is even better than I imagined.”

“I’m just a customer,” said Rania. “The bookseller is out back.”