The moon over Damascus was a sliver of bone, sharp and curved, offering just enough light to see the path but not enough to be seen by it.
Khalid moved like a shadow detached from its owner. He had left the Bedouin camp hours ago, slipping past Hamza's sleeping form and the drowsy watchmen. To enter the city at night was madness; the gates were barred, and the Ottoman patrols were doubled due to the recent unrest. But Khalid knew the old walls better than the soldiers did. He knew where the masonry had crumbled near the Bab al-Saghir, leaving a gap just wide enough for a man who had shed his pride to squeeze through.
He dropped onto the cobblestones of the alleyway, the impact jarring his teeth. He held his breath, listening. The city slept fitfully. A dog barked in the distance, and the heavy, rhythmic tread of a patrol marched two streets over.
He adjusted his cloak, pulling the hood low, and moved toward the eastern quarter. He was guided not by a map, but by a whisper he had heard in the market—a passing comment from the merchant about the Al-Zahra estate bordering the old Roman wall, where the jasmine grew so thick it choked the stone.
He found the spot. A high wall, draped in creeping vines that smelled intoxicatingly sweet in the cool night air. He stood in the narrow alley behind the estate, feeling foolish. He was a warrior of the Al-Fayid, a man who had ridden down wolves and weathered sandstorms. And here he was, shivering in an alley like a thief, waiting for a woman who had promised him nothing but a glance.
"You stand very still for a man risking his life."
The voice came from above.
Khalid looked up. On the other side of the wall, there was a small, iron-barred window, half-hidden by the vines. Layla was there. He could not see her face, only the pale shape of her hands gripping the rusted bars and the gleam of her eyes in the darkness.
"Life is risked in many ways," Khalid whispered, stepping out of the deepest shadow but keeping his distance. "Some risk it with a sword. I risk it with hope."
"Hope is a dangerous weapon," she replied softly. "It can cut the hand that holds it."
"I have calloused hands," he said.
A silence stretched between them, but it was not the empty silence of the desert. It was full, vibrating with the impossible reality that they were both here, separated by three feet of stone and iron, yet closer than they had ever been to anyone else.
"I did not think you would come," she admitted, her voice trembling slightly.
"I did not think I could stay away," he answered honestly. "Since the market... the desert has felt too large. The silence is too loud. I open my books, and the words do not make sense unless I imagine reading them to you."
Layla let out a breath that sounded like a sob stifled halfway. "And I... I sit in a house full of people and feel like I am on the moon. My father speaks of debts, the Pasha speaks of ownership, and I... I scream on the inside until my throat burns."
Khalid stepped closer to the wall. He wanted to reach up, to touch her hand through the bars, but he held himself back. To touch her would be to tarnish her honor; to touch her would be to start a fire he could not put out.
"They cannot own you, Layla," he said fiercely. "You are not a carpet to be rolled out, nor a cup to be filled. You are the mind that critiques the silk. You are the voice that silenced the souk."
"I am a woman in Damascus," she said bitterly. "My mind is a curiosity. My body is the currency."
She shifted, and he heard the rustle of paper.
"I brought you something," she whispered. She slipped a thin, folded piece of parchment through the bars. It fluttered down like a wounded moth.
Khalid caught it before it hit the dirty cobblestones. He unfolded it in the dim moonlight. It was a poem, copied in elegant, flowing calligraphy. Al-Mutanabbi.
"If you see the lion's teeth, do not fancy that the lion is smiling."
"A warning?" Khalid asked, looking up at her.
"A truth," she said. "The world is a lion, Khalid. It wants to eat us. You with your open desert, and me with my gilded cage. We are both prey."
He reached into his own tunic. He pulled out his leather-bound journal—the one he had written in back at the camp, the one that held his rawest thoughts, his fears, the poetry he showed no one. It was his soul, bound in skin.
"Then let us be indigestible," he said. He reached up. He couldn't reach the window, but there was a loose stone halfway up. He wedged the book into the crevice. "Take it."
"What is this?"
"Me," Khalid said. "It is everything I am. My thoughts on the stars, my anger at the tribe, the lines I cannot finish. I have never shown it to another living soul."
He saw her hand reach down, straining against the iron, until her fingers brushed the leather spine. She grasped it and pulled it up, through the bars, into her world.
"You give me your secrets," she whispered, clutching the book to her chest. "Why?"
"Because when I looked at you in the market," Khalid said, his voice rough with emotion, "I did not just see a woman. I saw a mirror. I saw the same hunger I feel every time I look at the horizon. We are the same verse, Layla, written in two different languages."
He heard her gasp softly. "Soul-twins," she murmured. "Al-ruh taw'am."
"Yes," he said. "The Sufis say that before we were born, our souls were gathered in a great army. Those who stood together there, recognize each other here."
"I stood next to you," she said, the certainty in her voice breaking his heart. "I know I did. I remember the shadow of your spirit."
A dog barked nearby, closer this time. A torch flickered at the end of the alleyway. The patrol was turning the corner.
"Go," Layla hissed, panic sharpening her voice. "If they find you..."
"I will return," Khalid promised, backing away into the dark.
"Read the page marked with the blue ribbon," she called out, a hurried whisper. "And pray for me, Khalid. Pray that the lion does not bite before you return."
Khalid melted into the darkness just as the heavy boots of the soldiers echoed on the stones. He moved through the city like a ghost, his heart pounding not from fear of capture, but from the terrifying exhilaration of being known.
He held her parchment against his skin. She held his journal in her hands. They had not touched, not even a fingertip to a fingertip, but as Khalid slipped back through the breach in the wall and out into the open desert air, he felt as though he had been completely and utterly consumed.