People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks

It was supposed to be spring; down in the small garden by the bank’s entrance, the crocuses were blooming. But it had snowed earlier that morning, and the bowl of each small flower brimmed with a foam of snowflakes, like tiny cups of cappuccino.

But in this view, half the houses weren’t there anymore. They were just jagged bits of masonry, sticking up in ragged rows like rotting teeth.

It wasn’t a large apartment, but everything in it had an easy grace, as if it had always been there.

soft, lilting dialect of the city, overlaid by the distinctive cadences of his own particular sestiere,

Much later, when I could think about it clearly, I consoled myself that there were many worse ways in which I might have been raped. I had been waiting for it, in truth, from the moment the Berber raiders appeared at the top of the dunes. Hooman’s famous hands did not leave a mark on me. When I struggled and thrashed and tried to get free of him, he subdued me with a skillful grip that pinned me helpless without hurt. Even when he came into me, there was no roughness in it. The shock of it was greater than the pain.

Wow