Chapter 22
‘Come on, Sinan,’ Abu Abdallah said. ‘Always look on the bright side.’
Sinan almost allowed himself to snap at his master. Instead, he bore the thudding pain in silence and went on staring through the barred window, across the valley and its welling shadows at the Alhambra, bone-white in the dying light. The scene quivered and swam. The blow had affected his sight.
‘Look, we may be in gaol,’ Abu Abdallah went on, ‘but at least it’s a gaol with a view. Besides, you know what God Almighty says in the Qur’an, “It may be that you dislike something . . .” ’
‘ “ . . .when in fact it is for your own good,” ’ Sinan said. ‘The Chapter of the Cow, verse 216.’ He turned to his master and looked at him from his own far continent, the dark diagonals of his face darker still in the twilig
