Chapter 8 · Untitled Chapter

They did not sit down.

That was the first thing, and in my father's house it was the whole of the argument. A man who has come to ask sits. A man who stands in the middle of the carpet with his weight even on both feet has come to say.

Three of them stood. The eldest of my father's brothers, and two more who had been old men when I was a girl and had not revised their opinion of me since. The attendant had backed to the wall with the dallah still tilted in his hand, and the silver hung there, and nobody told him enough, so the coffee stopped where it was.

"Maha."

Ammi said my name the way a clerk reads out a date.

"You will be at the house before the gates are bolted," he said. "Stand. The car has been outside long enough to be remarked on."

I put my hands inside the abaya, in my lap, and left them there. The tarha had slipped a finger's width; I drew it straight, and that was the only movement I made.

"The gates are bolted at ten," my brother said. "It is not yet nine."