Chapter 25 · Untitled Chapter

The heavy cedar doors of the majlis swung back before Tariq could gather his breath to answer. Footsteps followed—measured, dry, and accompanied by the faint brass rattle of official cases.

My uncle entered first, his white thobe stiff with starch, flanked by two elderly men whose sun-darkened foreheads bore the quiet rigidity of old provincial scribes.

They carried no portfolios of sleek leather like the city lawyers; instead, each brought a velvet-lined wooden tray holding heavy cylindrical stamps carved in bronze and a well of purple archival ink. Village notaries, summoned from the old ledger offices beyond the valley to lend the weight of ancestral register to a forced surrender.

Neither notary looked up to meet my eyes. In Najd, men of their station did not stare at a woman standing in her family’s hall. They took their cues from my uncle, bowing their heads slightly in deference to the house before advancing toward the low mahogany table where the settlement document lay displaced.

"You think a dismissed clerk ends the matter, Noura?" my uncle said, his voice dropping into the rasp of dry stone.