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\u201cI\u2019m going to tell you a story,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd when the story is finished, this will all be over.\u201d There are four of them huddled on the floor of her living room: Francisco, like the saint; Michael, like the angel; Jerome, like the translator; and her, Batul, like the queen of heaven. The apartment---a second-story walkup above a music shop, low-ceilinged, smelling faintly of clove and lemon---looks very much like what it is, the home of a twenty-four-year-old woman who makes a fair wage at a pottery factory. A number of brightly glazed mugs, sunbursts and peonies and beetles and birds, dangle from a rod above her stove. | Copyright 2019 by Megan Arkenberg. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices