“Shall I drive?” she asked Rania.

“I’ll take my own car. That way, once we’re done, we can go our own ways. We’ll meet at the southern entrance to the spice bazaar. You know it?”

Huda nodded, relieved she wouldn’t have to sit side by side with Rania in the close confines of the Corolla. That would be too intimate. She needed time alone to banish her girlish nostalgia, and forget about childhood friendships, magic salves, and blood oaths. She needed time alone to think of her dead brothers, time to rebuild the vengeful fire in her chest.

* * *

Beneath Shorja’s web of faded tarpaulins, the air was hazy with cinnamon, myrrh, and dust kicked up by a thousand feet. Blinking in the aromatic fog, the two women plunged into the narrow alleyways of the spice bazaar.

“Try to keep up.” Rania glared at Huda, then she forged ahead, skirting past a vat of bright green capers bobbing in vinegar. Huda shot daggers at her back, and struggled through the shoppers seeking out purple sumac, yellow turmeric, and powdery chunks of indigo. Someone dropped a bag. It exploded like a cardamom cluster bomb.

Vendors urged Rania to stop and taste a briny olive or sniff a sprig of sage. She sailed on, the crowd seeming to part before her, while Huda scurried in her wake, murmuring, “Excuse me, haji, perhaps next time.”

Huda squeezed past bowls of henna powder in shades of red, brown, and green, and remembered her grandmother delivering the same potions and powders to the sheikh’s farm. She was thinking of those lost golden days when she walked into Rania’s back. Rania was holding a jar of twigs, like a little girl who’d just unwrapped a music box with a ballerina twirling inside.

“Do you remember . . . ?” Rania trailed off.

Without another word, she pushed the jar into the vendor’s hands and hurried on. Pain stabbed Huda’s side. Of course she remembered the twigs. One rainy day, she’d taught Rania how to shred a stick of arak and use it to brush her teeth. Afterward, Rania said it was better than Colgate. Had she told Hanan about that too?

She followed Rania around a sharp corner. The dun-colored dome of an old hammam rose above the stalls. Tongues of steam twisted from its star-shaped vents.

“Women’s hours are over for today.” The bath keeper perched on a stool by the entrance. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

The two women sidled into the shade of the hammam’s brick walls. A barefoot urchin with matted hair emerged from the crowd and tugged on Rania’s sleeve.

“Madam, can you spare a coin for me?”

As Rania fumbled with her handbag, Huda pulled a couple of dinar from her pocket.