“Hold on, let me find someplace I can hear myself think.” The foreman of the renovation of the Metropolitan’s Islamic wing moved away from the activity and stepped into the partially constructed sleep temple. Keither was always drawn to one area on a job. So far this structure was only a skeleton of what it would become, but it already felt like a sacred space. Once it had stood in Greece and been used by the sick and infirm who came to pray and be healed. Now, block by block, it was being reconstructed from hundreds of those original stones. The first time Victor had seen the rough, chipped granite he’d imagined the man who, over two thousand years before, had built it. It was things like that, like wondering about that ancient builder, that made Victor appreciate his job. His buddies who worked regular sites didn’t get what was so different about the Met, and he’d long since stopped trying to explain. Your religion was a private thing, wasn’t it? “Okay, I can hear myself think now,”
