Outside, the call to prayer began, a wail that seemed to bend the air. Lena looked at the red hourglass. Inside, at the very top, a single grain of sand shimmered—not like mineral, but like a star.
Tariq was gone. The mausoleum was just an abandoned shack. The map in Lena’s hand was blank parchment. Francja - Egipt
Lena raised the hourglass above the French blue floor. She thought of her grandmother’s attic, of the trunk, of the word coward scrawled in a neighbor’s letter. She thought of the hieroglyph for star , and how, in ancient Egyptian, the same symbol meant to cross over . Outside, the call to prayer began, a wail