Chapter 36Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.
If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself,
How will you be able to understand
The secret of your existence when you die?
—Farīd ud-Dīn Attar, twelfth-century Persian Muslim poet
3:00 a.m. GMT+3, May 23, 2022
Karahan Tepe, former Turkey, now Anatolian Kurdish State
This can’t be happening again.
The object gone. Her weapons gone. Has she failed herself again? Has she failed another person she cares about again?
She knows this man. Aymen. And she knows him in all the wrong ways. He is here again, about to do what he did repeatedly each and every day for nearly a year, he and his brother.
Aymen, with the scar carved by Zara’s dead brother, a full head taller than her, with those dark piercing e
