Born in Granada in 1488, Hasan al-Wazzan is a small child when his Muslim family flees the fallen city for Fez. Told as his own year-by-year account, this novel follows him from exile into a life of trade, travel, and the upheavals of a divided Renaissance world.
A person shaped by many languages, faiths and cities can belong to all of them without being owned by any one. Being named after each place you have lived does not mean you come from a place; the road itself can be your country. Seeing identity this way makes it something that grows and moves rather than a fixed label.
Refugees often cling to the promise of return, like hanging the keys of a lost house on the wall and believing it waits for them unchanged. That hope comforts, but it also keeps them from facing what happened. Someone eventually has to teach them to look straight at their defeat.
Wherever you go, some people will want to sort you by your skin or your prayers. Bending to fit their category is a trap; the stance the book urges is that others must take you whole, or lose you. When minds around you are narrow, the answer is to leave and go further, not to make yourself smaller.
A community starts to fall apart the moment it agrees to give up on its weakest members. A related duty falls on the strong: anyone rich in money or in learning must treat other people's poverty with care. Solidarity with those at the bottom is what holds a group together.
Children say aloud the truths that adults keep quiet, and they are often right to. That early innocence was also a time of courage. Growing timid with age is a loss, and the fix is to find that childlike boldness again.