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The fire, though, was quiet. It showed in how she walked — deliberate, unhurried, as if measuring each step against a map only she could see. She worked nights at the bakery on Crescent Street, kneading dough until her knuckles ached, then sat on the fire escape reading poetry in a language most neighbors couldn't name.

“Mona Azar,” the landlord wrote on a scrap of paper, misspelling it twice before she gently corrected him. “Azar,” she said, “means fire.” Searching for- mona azar in-

Those who knew her spoke of her hands — always in motion, braiding hair, folding letters, pressing herbs into oil under a kitchen light that flickered like a failing star. She arrived in the neighborhood two springs ago, or maybe it was autumn; time bent around her like light through water. The fire, though, was quiet