The air in Khan el-Khalili was a rich brocade of scent and sound, a weight Dawud inhaled with every breath. It was the scent of his university days—rosewater and freshly ground coffee, dried apricot and dust, a subtle metallic tinge of weathered stones baking under the Egyptian sun. For a few precious moments, walking with Sarah and his brother Tariq down the familiar labyrinth of narrow streets, he could almost deceive himself. He could almost be just a man, a failed med student giving his loved ones a tour of the city that had ruined him.
The illusion was as thin as a soap bubble.
Tariq, his chest still cumbersome with the tuberculosis that had clung to his lungs in the refugee camp, depended almost entirely on Dawud's shoulder. But his own eyes, eyes so like their mother's, shone with
