Chapter 12 · Chapter 12

The majlis had been aired but not cooled. The oud from the morning's mabkhara still hung in the upper air where the window light cut through it, and the housekeeper had left the dallah on the sadr table with the finjans turned upside down on the tray — which meant she had expected more than two people, which meant the house had not yet been told that the visit was finished.

I stood at the edge of the carpet with my abaya buttoned to the throat and my shaila where I had pinned it in the car, my bag on my arm like a woman with somewhere else to be, which I had. My shoes were at the door, heels together, pointing out.

Saad stood at the far end of the room and did not come forward. That was the whole of it. He stood the way a man stands when the room is already his, and the two men near the archway found sudden business with their phones and their coffee and did not look at me. The hall had been talking. A hall always talks by not talking.

"You came back," he said.

"For my papers.