Night in the Library

They told Sitt Zainab their plan, and after a long hesitation she agreed — on one condition: that she would be there too, sitting in her little room at the back of the library with the door ajar.

"If it is Fahim," she said, "then I want to know why. In fifty years he has never taken so much as a scrap of paper from this library."

When Sitt Zainab locked the library door that evening as usual, Hadi and Laila were hiding behind the tallest shelf in the corner, sitting on the floor with a blanket, a torch switched off, a packet of sesame biscuits and Hadi's sound recorder.

At night, the library became a different place.

The jars glowed in the dark, each with its own faint golden light, so that the shelves looked like a sky full of stars. And the sounds trapped in the jars whispered so softly you could hardly hear them: distant singing, a laugh, a bell, a call to prayer. As if the library itself were dreaming.

"Can you hear it?" whispered Laila.

Hadi closed his eyes and listened. He smiled. "The library's breathing."