The maps came first, before the words. Before anyone had named the country we walked through, my grandmother carried a leather satchel of folded paper that smelled of wax and woodsmoke.
She unfolded them like prayers.
On her last morning, she handed me a single sheet, blank except for a small ink mark in the southwest corner. “You will know what to draw,” she said. I have been drawing it ever since, and the map is never finished.