"Nayir confronted the less pleasant reasons he's come. Morbid curiosity. The need for a sense of closure. A desire to prove himself capable of something. It was the selfishness of this last reason that weighed on him the most" (Chapter 2, p. 11).

"Works are accomplished according to intentions. A man receives only what he intends" (Chapter 3, p. 26).

"A family buries a woman with her back to Mecca only when she carries a baby in her belly, a baby whose face, in death, must be turned in the direction of the Holy Mosque" (Chapter 3, p. 27).

"'I've learned on thing here: when you enter the house of the blind, you put out your eyes'" (Chapter 5, p. 45).

"The punishment for having sex out of wedlock—for even being caught with a single woman - was arrest, charges of prostitution and public indecency, a trial without a lawyer, and, if parties were...