Chapter 6 · Untitled Chapter

The telephone on the side table rang twice, and then the steward came in with the tray and did not set it down, which was how I knew the message was not coffee.

He crossed the carpet at his own pace, set the dallah down, and spoke to Bandar first, and to me with his eyes, which was the correct order in Ammi's house and also the reason I had stopped expecting anything from it.

"A man at the gate," he said. "He will not come into the driver's room and he will not sit. He says the delegation requires Sayyidati's acknowledgment before the lamps are lit."

"Requires," I said.

"His word."

"And did he give you his name, or only his word?"

The steward's mouth did something that was almost respect. "Both, Sayyidati. I have written the name on the tray card."

I did not look at the card. It was on the tray, face up, small and white and patient, and I could feel it the way you feel a moth in a quiet room.

I thanked him—Ya'teek al-afiyah—and he went out and drew the majlis door nearly to, which is the way a good man leaves a room: still in it, still listening, in case he is needed.

The gahwa steamed faintly from the spout. Beside it the finjan sat empty, and the telephone sat behind it, black and heavy, older than the settlement, older than the delegation, older than any of the men currently standing in the sun because of me. Four years ago it had rung in this same room and I had answered it myself, because I had been twenty-six and had believed that a telephone was a thing you answered.

Bandar had not moved from the middle of the carpet. He was still standing, as he had been standing when the steward entered, as though his refusal to sit had become a position with sharp edges.

"Before the lamps are lit," he said.

"He is very precise about the lamps."

"A man who names the hour expects to be obeyed at it."

"Then he has been in this house before." I gathered the dark fold of my abaya against the divan and turned the finjan a quarter turn. "Everyone in this house names an hour. Nobody has ever once told me what happens at it."

He looked at me then, and I understood that he had heard the thing under the thing, which was the only useful skill he had ever shown in a majlis.

"What happens at it," he said, "is that a man writes down that you did not answer. That is all. It goes into the record with the date and the hour and the name of the man who stood in the sun, and after that the record says the daughter of Al-Subaie was sent for and did not come."

"The daughter of Al-Subaie is sitting here."

"She is. But a record does not care where a woman is sitting. It cares what she signed."

Behind him, by the far lattice, the late light had begun to go the dark gold of the inside of a date. The lamps were not lit yet. They would be lit by a boy with a taper who came through the corridors in order and never once looked at anyone, and when he reached this majlis the hour would be over, and everyone in Riyadh who cared to ask would know how I had spent it.

"Does he want me to go out to the gate?" I asked.

"He wants the acknowledgment. He does not care where you put your hand."

"And if I put my hand on nothing?"

Bandar leaned down, his sleeve clearing the brass, and turned the empty finjan back to where I had left it. "Then he stands in the sun until the sun is finished with him, and tomorrow a different man stands there, and the day after that the delegation writes to my office instead of to your steward, which is an elevation for them and an insult to me, and they know it."

"And you will answer the letter."

"I will answer the letter."

"In writing?"

"In the hall," he said, and that was all, and the way he said it was neither warm nor kind; it was the cold flatness of a man who had already counted the seats on both sides of a room.

I reached out, took the tray card, and read the name inscribed upon it. I set it back down exactly as it had lain, so that whoever looked next would not be able to tell that I had touched it.

"Tell him," I said toward the doorway, where the steward still waited in the seam of the opening, "that the acknowledgment has been received, and is being considered."

The steward's face remained impassive. "And considered means, Sayyidati?"

"Considered means nothing has been considered," I said. "Wallah, he may stand in the sun with that until the lamps are lit, and then he may go home and tell them a woman in a majlis gave him a sentence with two doors in it."

The door clicked shut all the way this time. Bandar did not take a seat. Outside, the footfalls passed with the taper, and the lamp in the adjoining corridor caught flame, glowing amber, while I sat in the dusk of the majlis holding an untouched finjan, letting the hour pass without me in it.