Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

I came back at dusk, because a woman who leaves a question standing in a majlis has already answered it, and I was not going to answer it for them.

The housekeeper let me in and I did not unpin the Shaila at the door. A corridor is not a locked room. I stepped out of my shoes at the edge of the carpet and left them there, and I went in with the folder under my arm.

The majlis was dark. The passage behind it was not. Nayef stood at the far end in a white Thobe with the collar still buttoned and no Bisht over it — this was not a wedding and he was not dressed for one — and my uncle stood in the middle of the passage with a folded paper in his hand and two of the council's men behind him holding the wall the way men hold a wall when they have been told not to speak.

Ammi did not step over the threshold of the wing. He stopped one pace short of the line where the marble changes, and I noticed that, and I kept it.

"Haifa.