The Map of Salt and Stars

Rawiya’s expedition continues towards the Red Sea, with al-Idrisi sketching maps all the way. The travelers approach Fatimid territory and are cautious about Fatimid suspicions of them being invaders, so the group pretend that they are pilgrims. They also must brave a hostile sandstorm. Rawiya and Khaldun grow closer, and she feels “relaxed, understood—things she had not truly felt since she’d left home” (132).

Tension enters Sitt Shadid’s home when her grandson Yusuf returns in an angry mood. Then, Nour’s mother shaves Nour’s head on the pretense that she has lice, but her real reason is that she thinks Nour will be safer if strangers assume that she is a boy. Nour protests, but eventually surrenders.

While Abu Sayeed guides the refugees on an inspiring visit through Amman to see Qasr Amra, a ceiling with egg-based tempera frescoes of constellations, Jordan also becomes an unsafe dwelling space. They will have to move on to Egypt. Zahra explains that they cannot easily seek asylum in America, as Nour is the only member of the family who is an American citizen by birth.

As the expedition enters Fatimid territory, al-Idrisi tells the explorers to not profess loyalty to King Roger of Sicily. As they go farther towards the Gulf of Aila they see Ibn Hakim, a fine warrior of the Fatimid Empire who insists that the crew pay their respects to the caliph at his palace before they pass through his roads. Rawiya reaches into her pouch and finds only the roc’s eye, which is strangely hot to grasp and so tumbles to the ground. Ibn Hakim picks up the eye, and it causes him to hear his deceased mother’s voice. Suspecting the stone of being a vehicle of sorcery, he insists that the caliph himself examine it. Ibn Hakim will not leave the travelers alone. Khaldun offers to sing in praise of the caliph, and his song is so seductive that Ibn Hakim and his men dance until they fall asleep. The travelers continue their expedition towards the Gulf of Aila.

Nour’s family and Umm Yusuf’s go on the road together, taking a car. They are heading to Aqaba (formerly named Aia) where they can get a ferry to Egypt. When they take a break to stretch their legs, Nour picks up a pistachio-colored rock, which changes color and seems magical. Back in the car, tensions are high and Nour accuses her mother of paying “more attention to her maps than to me, always preferring to paint instead of talk” (156). Her mother talks of Baba, saying that he was painfully silent when they met and told her “People don’t get lost on the outside. They get lost on the inside” (158).

Her mother then remembers that it is Eid al-Fitr (an Islamic holiday marking the end of Ramadan fasting) and that they should go to a butcher to purchase lamb. She gives Nour and Huda money for the errand. Their server at the butcher shop is new at her job. She used to play oboe until her neighborhood was shelled and her hands were injured, preventing her from playing an instrument. The only meat they can afford is goat. When they go to walk towards the van, two boys apprehend them. They pin Huda to the wall and intend to rape her. Nour tries to fight them off, calling for help. Abu Sayeed eventually finds them. When they return to the car, Huda says nothing about what has happened. Her thoughts are on the ferry to Egypt, which leaves at midnight.

The expedition lands safely in the Gulf of Aila and progresses to Cairo. There, Bakr buys a scarf for his mother, who is “a hard woman to please” and the reason he is driven to prove himself on the expedition (168). Rawiya meanwhile tells Khaldun that she misses her dead father and feels guilty about abandoning her mother. He responds that she should not feel guilty. At this moment, they realize that Ibn Hakim and his men are also in Cairo. Ibn Hakim labels them traitors to the caliph and sentences them to death. After a brutal fight in which Rawiya uses all her ingenuity to overcome Ibn Hakim, Bakr is stabbed. Before Bakr dies, he tells Rawiya to take the scarf he purchased and give it to her own mother.

Nour and her companions have dinner and a celebration. However, she cannot shake the memory of what happened to Huda and struggles to relax. Huda meanwhile urges them on to catch the ferry towards Egypt. The ferry is an hour late and so crowded that they must leave their car behind. Abu Sayeed confesses to Nour that he is scared as he does not know how to swim. Nour doesn’t either, as she was going to learn at Baba’s pool in New York but never started the lessons. Nour tells Abu Sayeed that she knows his son Sayeed ran away. Abu Sayeed admits that “Sayeed wanted something he couldn’t find […] something I couldn’t give him” (179). However, he feels that he can speak to his son through the stones he finds. He has faith that eventually his prayers will be answered and that his son will know what God wants him to know. Then, they see the one-legged man with a cane on the ferry. Nour initially mistrusts him, remembering the men who assaulted Huda. However, he is an ex-footballer.

Nour shows Abu Sayeed her color-changing stone and asks him if it is the nameless, precious stone of the jinn. He responds that she instinctively knows the answer. As they are talking, the inadequately equipped boat catches fire. Nour gets a life jacket because of her age, but there are not enough for everyone. Nour’s family get on a life raft, and she motions for Abu Sayeed to join them. However, he does not, as he wants to save the one-legged man. He falls into the water and, unable to swim, Abu Sayeed drowns.

Rawiya retrieves Bakr’s body and the expedition bury him in the direction of Mecca on the Nile Delta. The next morning, when they head East towards Alexandria to a seaside trade hub known as Baranis, they see evidence of feathers—evidence that the roc is still hunting them. Then, they see another brigade of men on horseback. These men have been tasked with stomping out Fatimid spies who threaten the Almohad Empire. They search the expedition’s belongings. The Almohad leader, Mennad, is suspicious of al-Idrisi’s mapmaking knowledge, which could advantage enemy troops. The expedition is held captive and made to parade across the desert. When the captors shove Rawiya and Khaldun into a tent, Khaldun despairs that their mission will end gruesomely. Rawiya confesses the truth of her identity to him. When he learns that she is a woman, he confesses that he always knew she was special and that he feels romantically toward her. He pledges that regardless of her gender, he will follow her until he dies. Rawiya says that if tomorrow is their last day, she will tell Khaldun a story.

Boats eventually rescue Nour and her family and take them to Nuweiba, an Egyptian beach. Nour deeply grieves Abu Sayeed, feeling that “I have no voice, no anchor” and that she will float “away without Abu Sayeed and his stones to weigh me down” (195). Her mother intends for them to take a bus westward towards Libya, but she doesn’t tell Nour the real reason to keep traveling. She tells Nour there may be someone who can help them, but she does not want her to get her hopes up. Nour picks a fight with Zahra, saying all she cares about is clothes and boys. She apologizes when she finds out that the gold bracelet Zahra keeps twisting around her wrist was a gift from Baba.

Nour takes a walk with her mother to see the Nile. Nour’s mother tells her that when she and Baba were first married, they lived in Ceuta. Their home there had a fountain decorated with ceramic tiles, and she still wears a necklace with a fragment from one of the tiles. They then sold the house to Baba’s brother, Uncle Ma’mun. However, Baba wanted to travel and find himself, so after a brief stint in Syria, they moved with their small daughters to New York. Nour’s mother tells her that Baba would be proud of her and that she is “more Rawiya than anyone” (205). Nour asks that if her father “didn’t have a map of himself […] did I ever see the real him?” (207). Her mother responds that the map Baba was looking for was Nour, as “the most important places on a map are the places we haven’t been yet” (207). Nour’s mother hands her a map, which has riddles painted onto it. She tells Nour that the riddles hold clues, and the clues will tell her where to go. Nour’s mother used riddles to plot out their journey’s course because she does not want outsiders to be able to read the map and know where they are going.