Idris II of Morocco

They have said it, in effect, every single day for years through the accumulated evidence of their choices.

The rest of that particular day unfolds the way most of Fatima's days now unfold, not dramatically but densely, filled with the accumulated small tasks of a woman who has made herself responsible for the well-being of an institution that has grown larger than any single person's oversight, and yet who has refused, stubbornly and consistently, to relinquish the parts of that oversight that require her direct and personal attention.

She meets in the early afternoon with a delegation of three scholars newly arrived from Tlemcen, men whose reputations preceded them by several weeks in the form of letters carried by traveling merchants, men who wish to establish themselves as resident teachers at the Karawiyan and who have brought with them, as a kind of dowry for their acceptance, a small collection of texts on jurisprudence that they hope will enrich the library's holdings.

She receives them not in the grand reception hall that some patrons might have insisted upon for the sake of ceremony, but in the same small office where she received Yusuf that morning, because she has found over the years that men accustomed to grandeur reveal more of their true character when grandeur is withheld.

I do not know your son well enough to promise you that his gift, if pursued, will lead to the security you rightly wish for him.

Study is not a guarantee of prosperity, and I would be lying to you if I claimed otherwise.

But I can tell you that the mosque does not require payment for his continued study, that a stipend exists for families whose sons show sufficient promise and sufficient need, administered without publicity so that no family need feel shamed in accepting it, and that if you wish, I will personally arrange for you to sit in on one of Al-Hassan's lessons yourself, so that you might see with your own eyes what your son has been learning, rather than trusting only his description of it, which I imagine, being thirteen, he has not explained to your satisfaction.

The father looks at her for a long moment, and something in his expression softens.