A novel by Omar Dakhane · 03 of 16
The Mirror House
Set in The Casbah, Algiers
"The notary's office smelled of cedar and old paper, which Nadia would later think of as the smell of inheritance."
The story
Nadia Belkacem inherits a house in the Casbah from a great-uncle she met twice. The conditions: the house must be maintained, the contents must not be dispersed, and the mirrors must never be covered. The house has seventeen mirrors. Each holds a reflection that doesn't quite match, a woman in Ottoman dress, a man at a writing desk in 1832, a child in a courtyard that no longer exists. The mirrors don't show the past. They hold it, the way a house holds the warmth of a fire long after the fire has gone out.
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