Chapter 12 Summary

In Upper Egypt, Amal resumes telling how their grandmothers meet. 'Omar has read Amal's research and figured out Isabel is a long-lost cousin. Amal tells him of a Pharaonic tapestry that matches one he has in his study. She asks him to bring it the next time he visits so they can compare them. Amal confesses she is lost in Anna's journals, a hundred years ago.

Amal's grandmother Layla rushes to her mother's house. Anna writes about awakening serenely, feeling she is in a favorite Oriental painting. Recalling her kidnapping, Anna jolts upright, but is still in the painting, for sleeping beside her is an Egyptian lady, framed in the mashrabiyya. Anna recalls tales in which abducted young men turn out to be women, and they become like sisters with their abductors. Anna feels again, not unreasonably, she is in safe hands.

In...