Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

The lamps were still burning at nine the next morning, though the windows had been opened to the north wind, and the majlis smelled of oud gone cold, which is not oud at all, the way a name repeated by a stranger is not a name.

I came down because I was sent for. I came down dressed, abaya fastened, tarha pinned, folder under my arm, and I stopped three steps onto the carpet because Saad had not looked up.

He sat at the sadr with last night's pen lying across the paper exactly as I had left it, and around that paper were four more sheets I had not seen before, ruled in a hand that was not his, weighted down at the corners with a finjan and a saucer and the brass tray-edge.

"Sit," he said, and did not say it unkindly.

I sat where I had sat before, one cushion down from the head of the room, and I put my folder on my knees and did not open it, because a woman who opens her folder first has already agreed to be read.

The steward came in with the dallah and poured, high and short, and