Chapter 10 · Chapter 10

The tray came in before he did: cardamom gahwa in the dallah, the finjans turned upside down in their row, dates at the rim of the dish, and the mabkhara already cold because the house had been aired since morning. I sat one seat off the sadr with my Tarha pinned straight and the folder on the carpet against my knee, spine turned in, so that anyone pushing through the door would not read it as a claim.

He came in and stopped at the edge of the carpet. "Sayyidati."

"Saad."

He sat. The attendant poured him the first one and he took it in his right hand without looking at it; then, because I was a guest and there was a servant in the room, he lifted the dallah off the tray himself and poured mine. The coffee came down in one long thread from a height and stopped before the finjan was half full.

I took it right-handed and held it without drinking, because a cup in the hand is something to do while the other person finds his sentence.

"I was told you sent for the papers of the house."

"You were told wrong.