Chapter 7 · Untitled Chapter

He had been carrying it folded against his palm the whole evening, and I had taken it for a phone.

My brother laid it on the low table and put his hand flat on it — the right hand, unhurried, the way a man rests a hand on a thing he wants read as already decided. Then he moved Ammi's saucer two fingers to the left, so the wet ring under the finjan would not print itself on the paper.

Nobody had told him to speak. Ammi lifted his chin by a hair, and that was the permission, and every woman on the far side of the carpet saw it and drew her tarha straight.

"This night," my brother said. "Not after the accounts. Not next week."

Two sheets. The first was a page with a line at the bottom of it, and the line was empty. The second had a date already written on it in a hand that was not his, and under the date three blank spaces for witnesses, and under those a square waiting for a seal. It was the shape of a thing that ends cleanly.

"You sign both," he said.