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There are times I have put my hands in my pocket(literally, not figuratively) only to find money that I didn't even know that I had - it's always a pleasant surprise. But the surprise is not so pleasant for Nadia who is our protagonist in this story - actually it's annoying and she hates it. Every time she slips her hands in her pockets, like a perfectly knitted net with thin threads cast in muddy waters, she always fishes something up. And unlike in my case, where I can remember how and sometimes even when I left the money in my pockets, she has no recollection whatsoever on the things she finds. First, it was an ordinary piece of fudge followed by a tube of lipstick and then, of all things, she pulls a map of Syria. And it didn't stop there! Oh, these experiences saturate her body with paranoia. Now she is on the lookout; the douchebag playing these tricks on her has to be found - but only if there was one.

This is a spellbinding story of friendship, so sweet I had to read it twice just to confirm my senses are still properly anchored. Just under 7 pages, there so much pleasure in it one might think they have read 500 pages of Amor Towles.

Amal is a master storyteller and I can't wait to explore more of her.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book, but first and foremost, here is the link to it():

‘We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind.�
“I think of it as leaks—leaks in the universe, and things that plug up those leaks. If one thing vanishes, another has to appear.�
"..when I write, when I create something out of the nothing—the everything, really—that is because somewhere else, someone else has a need. A leak. A hole in the pocket of their soul. And while I cannot be sure, perhaps my words are what will fill them up. So I have written longer things..."

And all those are attributed to one character - Warda who became a Freud to Nadia - an answer to Nadia's situation.

I wish I could tell you in a way you would understand that so long as you read this, the world is not so terrible a place; that so long as we speak to each other, so long as there is love in the movement of a pen over paper and love in the movement of eyes over words, we will be all right, we will know each other, we will learn each other like songs.

What a masterpiece.