Chapter 15 · Chapter 15

Below me the majlis came apart on one word.

He did not stand to say it. He was still at the sadr with his cup resting against his knee, and the word was small and flat — Kalas — and the room took it the way a room takes a dropped glass: everyone heard it, and no one looked at it.

The chairs went back. The older men rose first, because they always rise first, and the younger ones waited on them the way they had waited all evening. The tray with the two halves of the page went out under a cloth.

The mabkhara was lifted still smoking, and the woman who carried it did not hurry, and the smoke went up the stairwell ahead of her and reached me where I stood at the turn of the corridor with an empty finjan in my hand and no reason left to be holding it.

His uncle came up.

He came up slowly, the way a man comes up when he intends to be heard coming, and at the mouth of the corridor Saad's voice stopped him without ever rising.

"Ammi.