The Map of Salt and Stars

by Zeyn Joukhadar

I think to myself, It used to be. Time crumbles everything. I try to picture it like it was once, the paint smooth, the stones polished. People make such beautiful things, I think, even though they destroy so much.

‘People don’t get lost on the outside. They get lost on the inside. Why are there no maps of that?’ ”

“Must there be a lesson?” al-Idrisi said. “Perhaps the story simply goes on and on. Time rises and falls like an ever-breathing lung. The road comes and goes and suffering with it. But the generations of men, some kind and some cruel, go on and on beneath the stars.”