Before You Begin

Before you begin.

A sleepless caliph asks for a story, and the night opens into another chamber of Baghdad: a romance carried by voices, glances, doors, letters and river music. This tale begins in the court of Harun al-Rashid, but its heart belongs to Jubayr bin Umayr and the Lady Budur, two lovers whose trust is wounded and whose longing must find indirect roads back to speech.

The visual apparatus introduces the reader to those roads before the tale unfolds. The character plates establish faces and roles; the maps show the Tigris, Budur’s house, the palace and the messenger’s paths; the connection plates trace how music, letters and secrecy bind the people together. The recaps gather the plot as illuminated memory, so the reader can move through the romance with the feeling of a richly prepared stage.

Read it as a moonlit story of mediation. Love here rarely travels in a straight line. It passes through a singer’s boat, a lifted curtain, a sealed page, a cautious witness, and finally the city itself, glittering beside the river.