The Map of Salt and Stars

The Almohads force the expedition to don the Almohads’s colors and fight alongside them. Rawiya fears that if the Almohad leader Mennad discovers her magical stone he will use it to his advantage. He has already confiscated al-Idrisi’s manuscript, and al-Idrisi fears he will be unable to reclaim it. There is also the threat of the roc and other wild beasts in the roc’s ancestral hunting grounds. However, they spot King Roger of Sicily’s army. Rawiya aims to spear Mennad when she grabs the roc’s eye and the ground shakes, and a giant serpent appears. Then, they see the roc, and al-Idrisi wonders whether it's “our doom […] or our salvation” (215).

Nour and her family are in Benghazi, Libya. Huda shows signs of a high fever and sickness, so Nour’s mother sends Nour and Zahra to find something to eat. The city is littered with bullets, as the rebels fired their guns to celebrate victoriously overtaking the land. The sisters reconcile, Zahra confessing that she was jealous of Baba’s storytelling with Nour. She then shares that she feels that she has not “really been there” since his death, as she felt “like I crossed a bridge and couldn’t come back” (218).