She ran her hand over the worn table, her fingers brushing the various boxes and baubles. Nahri had spent countless hours in this cramped room, helping Yaqub with inventory and trying to pretend she wasn’t hanging on every precious word he imparted about medicine. Back in Daevabad, she’d have done almost anything to return, to spend just one more day in Egypt, one more afternoon dicing herbs and pounding seeds in the sunlight streaming through the tall window as Yaqub droned on about treating stomach cramps and insect bites.
In none of those dreams had Nahri arrived fleeing Daevabad’s violent conquest at the hands of people she’d thought dead, people who in another life she might have loved—nor did she imagine traveling with a man who by any right should be her enemy.
Yaqub snapped his fingers in front of her face and then gestured to an oil-splattered paper package. “Sambousek. Eat.” He grunted, settling on a stool. “Were I smart, I would only give you one per question answered.”
Nahri opened the package, her belly rumbling at the pile of sambousek, the smell of the fried dough making her lightheaded. “But that would make you a terrible host. After all, you did call me a guest.” She all but inhaled the first pastry, closing her eyes in delight at the taste of the salty cheese.
Yaqub smiled. “Still the little street girl. I remember the first time I fed you: I’d never seen a child eat so fast. I thought for sure you would choke.”
“I was hardly a child,” she complained. “I think I was fifteen when you and I started working together.”
“You were a child,” Yaqub corrected softly, remorse in his voice. “And clearly so very, very alone.” He hesitated. “I … after you disappeared, I regretted that I had not done more to reach out to you. I should have invited you into my home, found you a proper husband …”
“I would have turned you away,” Nahri said wistfully. “I would have thought it was a trick.”
Yaqub looked surprised. “Did you not trust me even at the end?”
Nahri swallowed her last bite and wordlessly took the cup of water he offered. “It wasn’t you. I didn’t trust anyone,” she said, realizing it as she spoke. “I was afraid to. It always felt like I was one mistake away from losing everything.”
“You sound so much older.”
She forced a shrug, dropping her gaze before he could see the emotions in her face. She’d started to trust people in Daevabad—at least as much as Nahri was capable of trusting anyone. She’d had friends and mentors—roots. Nisreen and Subha, Elashia and Razu, Jamshid and Ali—even Muntadhir and Zaynab in their own way.
At least she’d had roots until the first person she’d trusted—the first person she’d let into her heart—had ripped them out and set everything she’d built spectacularly ablaze.
“It’s been a long few years.” Nahri changed the subject, her appetite vanishing. “How have you been doing? You look pretty good. I wasn’t sure you’d still be …”
“What? Alive?” Yaqub harrumphed. “I am not that old. The knee gives me trouble, and my eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were—as you so kindly pointed out—but I’m still better than half my competition, out there mixing chalk and sugar syrup into their marked-up products.”
“Have you considered taking on an apprentice?” She nodded to the untidy shop. “It’s a lot of work.”
He made a face. “I’ve tried a few sons-in-law and grandsons. The ones who weren’t useless were lazy.”
“And your daughters and granddaughters?”
“Are safer at home,” he said firmly. “There has been too much war, too many of these foreign soldiers mucking about. French, British, Turkish—one can hardly keep track.”
Nahri drew back, confused. “British and Turkish? But I thought … aren’t we controlled by the French?”
Yaqub gave her a look like she’d lost her mind. “The French have been gone for years now.” His face grew even more disbelieving. “Nahri, where have you been that you did not know about the war? They were battling on both sides of the Nile, through the streets of Cairo …” His voice grew bitter. “Foreigners, all of them. Bloodying our land; seizing our food, our palaces, all these treasures they were said to have dug out of the ground—and then claiming it was all done because each would be better at ruling us.”
Her heart sank. “And now?”
“The Ottomans again. A new one. Says things will be different, that he wants to lead a modern and independent Egypt.” Yaqub let out a grumpy snort. “Plenty of people like him, like some of his ideas.”
“But not you?”
“No. They say he is already turning on some of the Egyptian nobles and clerics who supported him.” He shook his head. “I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs. And those Europeans will be back. People do not cross a sea to fight without expecting some return on their investment.”
At that, Nahri forced herself to eat another pastry. It seemed wherever she went, her people were being pushed down by foreign rulers and killed in wars over which they had no say. In Daevabad, at least, she’d had some power and had done her damnedest to set things on a different course—her marriage to Muntadhir, for starters, and the hospital. And still it had done nothing, her efforts at peace destroyed by violence again and again.
Yaqub leaned against his workbench. “So now that you have effectively diverted the conversation twice, let us return to those questions I have for you: What happened? And where have you been all these years?”
Nahri stared at him. She
