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Night Eleven

The Lost Manuscript

It was an accident of light that revealed the secret. Youssef had been working on copying his father's manuscript for three days when, one afternoon, the sun entered through the window at an unusual angle and struck the back of the last page. That was when he saw the traces — tears carefully reglued with a transparent adhesive, so skillfully that only oblique light could reveal them. Someone had torn out pages. And someone else had hidden them.

He counted the gaps. Twenty-three pages. Twenty-three pages at the heart of the manuscript, where his father had transcribed what he called in his letters the beating heart — the melodies of Amazigh initiation ceremonies, the songs that only women knew, passed from mother to daughter since time immemorial.

— Your father sent them to me, said Ibn Rachid. Six years ago. He knew that if Granada fell, the entire manuscript would be too dangerous to carry. He separated the heart from the body. The body travels with you. The heart was here, safe.

He returned with a bundle of pages wrapped in green silk. He placed it on the table beside the manuscript.

— Twenty-three pages, he said. Exactly.

Fatima Tafraout reached out and lightly touched the tifinagh symbols with her fingertips. — My grandmother wrote this, she said softly. On the walls of her house. On her pottery. I thought it was just decoration.

✦ Night Twelve awaits you — The Fountain of Wisdom ✦