Chapter 13 · Chapter 13

The summons came on paper, at nine in the morning, carried by a driver who did not step out of the car.

Three days, I had said. The council had given me one.

The majlis of my father's house smelled of Oud burned too early in the day, as though someone had wanted the room to seem older than it was. I left my shoes at the threshold and crossed the carpet in the order I had been taught, and I did not look up until I reached the place left for me—not the Sadr, not the far end, but the middle, which is where a family seats a woman it means to discuss.

Ammi sat at the Sadr. He had put on his Bisht indoors, which was a decision and not a habit, and it told me the paper was to be read as an occasion.

The Gahwa came before anything else, as it must. The Dallah tilted, the pour high and thin, the Finjan filled to less than half. My uncle first, because of the seat. Then the man from the old district who had come with a leather register under his arm. Then me.