Amina paused. She thought of her own mother, a domestic worker in a wealthy house. She wrote: "More than three coins. Always more."

Bored and cold, she unwrapped the book.

Beside a section on Hibah (gifts), a previous reader had written: "My father gave me a horse when I was ten. He took it back when I failed my memorization. Is a gift given in conditional love truly a gift? Or a leash?"

She found the book on the highest shelf, dustier than a forgotten memory. Al-Hidayah , Volume 2. Commentary on the laws of transactions, marriage, and disputes. The Bushra edition—cream pages, brittle edges, and a spine that cracked like a confession when she opened it.

Amina smiled. She took out her own pen.

"A leash," she wrote back. "A gift with a string is a trap."

Amina's heart slammed against her ribs. The waiting room was empty. The rain was a curtain. She turned.

Amina wasn’t supposed to be there. She was a first-year Alimiyyah student, barely eighteen, with more questions than she had vocabulary for. Her teacher, Shaykh Farid, had sent her on an errand: "Fetch the old Bushra print. The new ones have misplaced a section on khiyar al-majlis —the option of withdrawal. It's like selling a bird without mentioning its broken wing."

Amina laughed, tucking the parcel under her raincoat.

The storm worsened. Her bus never came. She took shelter in the abandoned railway waiting room—a skeletal building of peeling blue paint and the smell of rust. Alone. The rain sealed her inside.