Chapter 17
Lubna led them higher and higher up the steep alleys of al-Bayyazin. She had waited in the market until the noon prayer-call sounded and she’d known that her lateness would earn her a beating from her new master . . . before, or after that other, nightly violation? And then they had come, Sinan and Abu Abdallah, and she hadn’t cared any more.
Now they climbed in silence, Abu Abdallah with an agility that belied his age, Sinan with his silent-footed hunter’s stride. Eventually the houses thinned and they came to the first graves in the terraced cemetery. Above them, the line of the city wall followed the contour of the hillside. Beneath it was the low escarpment pierced with caves. They might have been the burrows of a colony of rodents; except that the inhabitants were men and
