The year the rains failed was the year their love was truly tested. The village well grew shallow, and the olive trees began to drop their bitter, shriveled fruit. Panic began to seep through Al-Nur like a slow poison.
One evening, huddled around a single oil lamp to save fuel, the sisters sat in silence.
"The merchant from the city came by today," Aysha said, her voice small. "He offered half the usual price for the silk rug. He knows we're desperate."
Amina slammed a heavy wrench onto the table. "We aren't desperate. We're just... thirsty. I can dig deeper into the old spring, but I need materials. We need a pump."
Jannat looked at her sisters. She didn't see fear; she saw a fire that needed a breeze. "We aren't selling the rug for half-price," Jannat said firmly. "And we aren't waiting for the sky to cry for us. We're going to use our heads.
Jannat spent the next three days in the village archives and talking to the elders. While others were praying for rain, she was looking for history. She discovered that an ancient Roman aqueduct ran deep beneath their property—long forgotten and clogged by centuries of silt.
"Amina," Jannat called out on the fourth morning. "If I can show you where the stone channel sits, can you build a lift?"
Amina's eyes lit up. "If there's water down there, I'll bring it to the surface if I have to pull it up with my teeth."
For the next month, the sisters became a machine of pure intellect and sweat.
Jannat managed the logistics. She traded their remaining dried fruits for heavy timber and rope. She spent her nights calculating the angles of the slope to ensure that if they did find water, it would flow naturally toward their garden and the village square. She didn't sleep, her mind a constant whirr of "What if?" and "How much?"
Amina was the architect of the physical world. She spent her days covered in red clay, digging a vertical shaft. She engineered a pulley system using scavenged gears from an old mill. It was grueling, back-breaking work, but every time she felt her muscles scream, she looked up to see Aysha bringing her water or Jannat checking the structural integrity of the walls.
Aysha took on the most stressful burden: she became the sole breadwinner. To fund the "Great Dig," she doubled her output at the loom. Her fingers bled from the friction of the wool, and her eyes burned from working by candlelight long into the night. She didn't complain. She knew that every inch of rug she wove bought another foot of rope for Amina.