<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/b/b5/Fatemeh.jpg)<br/>Fatemeh Taleghani (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1461873)</div>When Fatemeh had been a young girl, her mother had fascinated her with stories and pictures from the cities she had visited in her travels - Baghdad, Cairo, Kabul, and even Moscow, far to the north, a city that lay in what seemed like the fairy-tale realm of the Tsars. Her father, by comparison, kept her mind on the much less adventurous subjects of history and philosophy, but even he could not help but inspire awe and wanderlust with tales of the Caliphates of old, stretching from Afghanistan in the east all the way west to Morocco and Spain. There were so many wonders of architectural beauty and historical significance for her to see, and she planned to visit them all, one day.<br/><br/>The coming of the drow had shattered those plans, as they had all her others. Perhaps she would spend the rest of her days in servitude to her new masters, perhaps her life would be full of conflict and danger as she fought them wherever she could. Either way, it seemed that her dreams of travel and sightseeing were never to be.<br/><br/>And yet, here before her very eyes was the Alhambra.<br/><br/>Not<em>the</em>Alhambra, of course. This building did not quite have the same stature and ancient majesty of that most noble palace of Al-Andalus, but not from want of trying. She had heard of Club Zorayda on her way to St. Augustine, of course, and had been told what to expect, but seeing it with her own eyes was quite an experience.<br/><br/>Nevertheless, she had work to do. The trail she had followed across the ocean and along the train lines had led her to this city, and if she was going to find out about the movers and shakers of St. Augustine, this was the place to do it. With a knapsack on her back, and dressed as presentably as she could make herself from the scraps she had when she left Iran and the pieces she had hurriedly bought as she made her way through America, she approached the man standing between her and the back door, ready with a<em>salam</em>on her lips and a tip in her hand.