The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Jamal al-Hilli frames the tale as a corrective to slanders about the pirate captain Amina al-Sirafi, presenting her own account of how she returned to the sea after years in hiding. Amina lives near Salalah with her daughter Marjana and her mother, trying to suppress her longing for the ocean. After a rumor spreads that she fought off a demon while disguised as a fisherwoman, Sayyida Salima al-Hilli tracks her down. Salima reveals that her granddaughter Dunya has vanished and blames a Frankish mercenary, Falco Palamenestra. She offers a fortune, then uses letters written by her dead son Asif, once Amina’s scribe, to expose Amina’s identity and pressure her into accepting.

Amina first seeks out Dalila, a former crewmate and Banu Sasan poisoner, who reveals that Falco once contacted her through an agent named Layth. In Aden, Amina discovers that her old ship, the Marawati, has been seized and her trusted sailor Tinbu arrested over iron linked to a murdered pilgrim ship. With Dalila’s drugs and the help of Yusuf, Tinbu’s lover, Amina stages a prison break, frees Tinbu and the crew, retakes the Marawati, and escapes Aden by burning and outmaneuvering war galleys. Her attempt at discretion is ruined, but her command is restored.

The crew learns that Falco had been actively seeking Amina. They trace Layth to Zabid, where he admits Dunya approached Falco herself with knowledge of the legendary Moon of Saba. Before he can reveal more, Layth dies choking on silver coins, evidence of Falco’s lethal sorcery. Amina confronts Salima, who admits Dunya studied the Moon but burned her notes. When Amina tries to quit, Salima threatens her family, forcing her to continue. Amina finds a scorched clue mentioning white snakes, hidden waters, and stone hands, and decides to seek Majed in Mogadishu.

Majed, now a respectable cartographer with a wife, Nasteho, and children, reluctantly helps. He connects Dunya’s clue to Socotra’s feared cave systems, marked by handprints and associated with serpents, sorcery, and pirates. Though Amina wants him to remain safe, Majed insists on joining out of loyalty to Asif. The Marawati reaches Socotra by an unnervingly perfect passage, and Amina, Tinbu, and Dalila go ashore. They find a huge shipwreck apparently bitten in half, then a devastated village where elders have been murdered. Their watcher reveals himself as Raksh, Amina’s demon husband, whom she believed dead.

Interludes reveal that Amina once drunkenly married Raksh in the Maldives after he promised luck and success. He is a spirit of ambition and discord who fed on human desire, and his bargains helped fuel Amina’s earlier legend while ruining others, including Asif. On Socotra, Raksh claims Amina’s marriage bond weakened him and admits he gave Falco information. Under Amina and Dalila’s false promise of a ritual divorce, he reveals that Falco survived the wreck, enslaved villagers, and forced Dunya to help him in the cave. Amina infiltrates the caverns through a secret route, finds Dunya’s quarters empty, frees surviving Socotran prisoners, and surrenders herself to Falco’s men to let the others escape.

Falco shows Amina his transformed followers and explains his obsession with ancient power. He tries to force a sea-magic binding into her, but Tinbu and Dalila attack with explosive arrows, and Raksh removes a magical stinger from Amina’s chest before a monstrous marid rises from the sea. Amina and her companions escape with villagers, then rescue Dunya adrift in a damaged boat. Dunya confesses she was not kidnapped: she fled an arranged marriage and trusted Falco because he flattered her scholarship. She translated rituals for him before realizing he was murderous. She also reveals the Moon of Saba is not a pearl but a washbasin that grants terrible Sight, and that her family were guardians of dangerous occult knowledge.

Falco catches the Marawati with his enslaved marid. Raksh flees in a skiff, while the marid devastates the ship. Dunya destroys the tablets containing the rituals and bargains for the crew’s safety by promising to guide Falco from memory. Falco disarms the crew, stabs Amina, and throws her overboard. Amina survives days at sea and lands on a strange island of unseen beings, where Raksh reappears. He explains that the Moon can enslave spirits of discord, especially during the coming eclipse, and that Marjana may share his nature through blood ties. To stop Falco, Amina petitions the island’s peri court. They refuse to interfere and try to execute her, but Khayzur, a dissenting peri, saves her and reveals that the island has changed Amina into a minor Transgression, a human-formed bridge between realms. Amina negotiates limited freedom: she must retrieve five dangerous Transgressions, beginning with the Moon of Saba.

Khayzur returns Amina and Raksh to Socotra, where Amina wins the aid of Magnun, a fierce Egyptian pirate captain, and receives a meteor-iron dagger. They launch a surprise raid on Falco’s camp. Amina discovers she can see Falco’s oath-bonds and uses the meteor blade to sever them, stripping power from his followers. Dalila kills Yazid, Falco’s lieutenant, and Amina frees the enslaved marid by cutting its leashes. With the eclipse beginning, Falco retreats into the cave with Dunya, and Amina follows through the opened Door.

Inside, Amina survives an illusion of Asif’s death, kills the nasnas feeding on her grief, crosses a monster-filled chamber, and reaches Dunya as the ritual reveals the Moon of Saba. Falco sees his reflection in the basin, but Dunya has reversed the incantation so that al-Dabaran possesses him. The lunar spirit, enraged after centuries of imprisonment, attacks. Amina calls on the freed marid, which smashes open the cave to admit seawater and moonlight. Amina throws the basin to al-Dabaran, who shatters it and escapes. Falco is crushed and dying; Amina kills him to end the threat.

Afterward, Amina refuses Magnun’s offer to join his raiders and maroons Raksh on a raft rather than let him keep shaping her legend. She tells Dalila, Tinbu, and Majed about her obligation to recover four more Transgressions, and they choose to stay with her. In Aden, Amina delivers Dunya’s farewell letter to Salima, refuses to reveal Dunya’s location, and accepts Salima’s enmity, though Salima promises not to harm Amina’s family. The al-Hilli family djinn gives Amina books and tools for Dunya. Amina then returns home to Marjana and her mother. In the final scene, Dunya has taken a new identity as Jamal, a young scribe aboard the Marawati. Jamal offers to record Amina’s adventures, and Amina agrees on one condition: the story must be told in her own words.