"The task had seemed simple enough at the beginning: where had the idea first come from that the little triangle of silk embroidery, hung with three tassels, had the strength to fend off evil? And where did people still believe in it?" This, the latest leg of Sheila Paine's odyssey--Out of Central Asia--takes her through war-torn Eritrea and Somalia, past the ancient rock churches of Ethiopia and the tiny pyramids of Sudan, through Egypt and across the Mediterranean to Greece, ending in the bandit land of Albania. It is an adventure across the fault lines of history and religion too, as the "Linen Goddess" fades and reappears from view. And after a journey through some of the least visited and most dangerous parts of the world, Paine finally catches up with the goddess surprisingly close to home.