Something like Grace

Miles Harrington was not accustomed to confusion.

At twenty-four, he was the youngest senior acquisitions analyst at Ryland & Keane, a financial firm so elite it didn’t advertise, didn’t recruit, and didn’t tolerate delay. He moved through life with the same clipped efficiency that he brought to his spreadsheets: swift, clean, confident.

Which is why he found the entire situation in the Marrakesh medina so intolerable.

He told his driver to wait outside the souk, arrogantly assuming he’d be in and out in ten minutes. Instead, Miles stood in a churning maze of merchants and shouting children, eyes stinging from spice and diesel, his phone useless with no signal and less battery. His Arabic was limited to what he’d memorized on the flight over: “Thank you,” “Please,” and “Where is the hotel?” None of which helped when you were hopelessly lost.

He elbowed his way past a group of old men playing chess and ducked under a sun-bleached awning, trying to remember if he’d passed the same rug stall three times or four. The smells here were different: something burning, something sweet, and under it all, the sharp, sour stench of his own panic.

“Why in the world did I come here?” he muttered.

“You’re not the first foreigner to think that,” a voice said in oddly accented English.

Miles spun.

A woman leaned against the clay wall, arms crossed. She was older than him, maybe thirty-five or forty. Her face deeply tanned, framed by a headscarf patterned in indigo and gold. Her clothes were practical and worn, but her posture radiated a kind of amused authority.

“I’m fine,” Miles snapped. “I don’t need help.”

“Of course not.” She didn’t move. “You just look like someone who might start bartering with a stray cat.”

He tried to walk past her but ended up stopping again five steps later, unsure whether to turn left or right. The woman appeared at his side without seeming to move.

“I’m Layla,” she said. “And you are lost.”

“I’m not lo-” He sighed. “Miles. Miles Harrington. And fine, yes, I’m lost. I need to get back to the Grand Atlas Hotel.”

She studied him. “That’s a mile and a half away. And you’re heading the wrong direction.”

“Fantastic,” he muttered.

Layla tilted her head. “Why are you here?”

“Vacation.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“And business,” he admitted. “Buying out a startup.” He pulled at his collar. “The founder’s being unreasonable, but I’ll outbid the French guy. Eventually.”

“Charming,” she said dryly.

He frowned. “What do you do?”

“Whatever needs doing,” she said.

She began walking. After a moment, Miles followed.

The sun was sinking fast, casting long shadows. As they moved, Layla paused often, greeting vendors by name, slipping coins to children, offering directions to confused tourists. She moved through the market like she belonged to the rhythm of the place.

Miles struggled to keep up. His shoes pinched. He was sweating through his linen shirt.

At one corner, Layla suddenly veered off down a narrow alley.

“Shortcut,” she said over her shoulder.

He hesitated, glancing behind him, then followed.

The alley was tighter here, the buildings leaning together overhead. Halfway through, two figures stepped into their path, teenagers, faces half-covered with scarves.

Miles froze.

Layla’s voice was calm. “Afternoon, Youssef. Still pretending to be a bandit?”

The taller boy snorted and lowered his scarf. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

“You know them?” Miles whispered.

“They’re mostly harmless,” she said. “Mostly.”

“What’s in the bag?” the shorter one asked, nodding toward Miles’s leather messenger.

“Just work stuff,” Miles said. “Listen, I don’t want any trou-”

Before he could finish, the taller boy darted forward and grabbed the bag.

“Hey!” Miles lunged after him but slipped, falling hard onto the cobblestones.

Pain shot through his elbow. The boy was already gone, vanishing around the corner. Layla didn’t chase. Instead, she crouched beside Miles.

“You okay?”

“My laptop was in there,” he snapped.

“So were three granola bars and a surprisingly dull business proposal,” she said. “You talk to yourself when you walk.”

He stared at her. “You’re not going after him?”

She met his gaze. “Would you?”

He blinked. “I…yes! Or I’d call the police.”

Layla stood, brushing off her hands. “You think they’ll come down here for your computer? You think they care?”

Miles got up, wincing. “Why wouldn’t they care? It was stolen.”

She gave him a look that made him feel very young.

“Because,” she said softly, “to the police, a lost tourist with insurance is less important than someone with no food for tomorrow.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

At the hotel, Miles barely mumbled “thanks” before disappearing into the air-conditioned lobby. His arm ached. His pride ached worse.

He filed a loss report, but the concierge’s expression told him everything: don’t expect much.

The next morning, he received a folded note at the front desk.

“Come to the café near the tannery. Noon. Wear different shoes.”

No signature, but he knew.

He didn’t want to go. He almost didn’t go.

But he did.

The café was a low-roofed place with cracked tiles and rich coffee. Layla sat at a table with a steaming pot of mint tea. Beside her sat the taller boy from the alley, Youssef, now looking much less dangerous, fidgeting with a frayed strap on Miles’s stolen bag.

“You got it back?”

“I borrowed it back,” Layla said. “Youssef had second thoughts.”

The boy rolled his eyes but handed over the bag.

“Everything’s here,” Miles said slowly, surprised.

“Even the dull proposal,” Layla added, sipping tea.

Youssef looked up. “You have money?”

Miles hesitated.

Layla intervened. “He wants a finder’s fee.”

“Finder’s fee? He stole it!”

“Lesson one,” she said. “Sometimes charity means letting someone save face.”

Miles looked at Youssef. The boy met his eyes, defiant but not cruel.

He handed over 200 dirhams. Youssef nodded once, then left.

Layla stood.

“You’re not done yet,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She tossed him a soft canvas sack. “Come on. You owe me a favor.”

They spent the next few days moving through corners of the city Miles would never have found alone: a run-down school in need of books, a clinic missing bandages, a shelter where the meals were stretched thinner than hope.

At each stop, Layla handed something over; from the canvas sack, from her pack, from her network of invisible hands and favors. And each time, she expected Miles to help.

He did. Awkwardly at first, then more willingly.

One afternoon, they stopped at a rooftop where clotheslines danced in the wind. A girl of about eight sat in the corner, humming to herself as she rolled strips of gauze.

Layla crouched next to her. “Amira, this is my friend Miles.”

The girl looked up. She had the palest eyes Miles had ever seen, and a scar that curved from her temple to her jaw.

Miles smiled. “Hi.”

The girl nodded solemnly and returned to her task.

“She was in an accident,” Layla explained later, as they walked. “Fire. Her parents are gone. She won’t speak anymore. But she listens.”

Something cracked a little inside him.

Later that night, he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of the girl’s hands folding bandages.

He opened his laptop and deleted the proposal. The startup he’d come to buy didn’t need another merger. It needed space to grow. He wrote a different pitch. One with room for partnership.

And charity.

On his last day, Layla met him outside the hotel.

“I owe you more than a bag,” he said.

She shook her head. “You didn’t owe me anything. But you needed something.”

“What?”

She smiled. “A reason.”

He nodded, understanding now.

As he turned to leave, she said, “Do something with what you learned.”

He did.

Years later, Miles Harrington would be known not only as a savvy investor, but also as the founder of the Amira Foundation, a nonprofit funding education and healthcare in underserved regions. He credited a trip to Morocco with the start of it all, though he rarely shared the full story.

He never saw Layla again.

But sometimes, in crowds or sunlit alleys, he imagined he caught glimpses of a scarf patterned in indigo and gold, vanishing just around a corner.