Jazarah sat on the balcony and leafed through Genet’s notebook. In the sketches, the city was thronged with pilgrims. Now only small clusters of scholars explored and studied the city and its machines.

She saw the flaws in Genet’s sketches now. To the casual observer, they were lifelike renderings. Jazarah recognized his exaggeration of the pilgrims’ joy and the heightened divine majesty of the architecture. She wondered if Genet would have seen it, or, if so, admitted it.

Color was returning to the fire-scoured landscape in the form of vivid flowering things. Perhaps Genet was right. Perhaps this was paradise.

Chapter 97

Chapter 99