Chapter 14 · Chapter 14

I had not gone out of that gate. I had gone up, and slept badly, and come down into a house that had been busy while I slept.

"Sayyidati," the steward said at my door. "The majlis."

They called me in for the coffee, which in this house is how a person is asked for.

I came through the side door with the abaya closed to my throat and the tarha over my hair, and I stopped where the carpet changes its pattern, at the far end, and greeted the room oldest first.

Saad answered me before his uncle did.

Every man on those cushions measured that, and said nothing, and the mabkhara went round and the oud in it was the only thing in the room that moved freely.

"Sit, Deema," his uncle said. "You are not a stranger to be kept standing."

"I am standing until I know what I am," I said. Then I sat.

The majlis was full. His kin along both walls, the older ones nearest the sadr, two of the younger ones by the door with their phones turned face down on the carpet.