Chapter 7 · Chapter 7

The Shamal came in before dawn and stayed, so the house kept its doors shut and its shutters down, and the driver who came for me at nine had to hold the rear door against the wind with his shoulder.

The message had not come from Ammi. It came from the eldest of the other house, in the careful wording such men use when they want a thing to sound like courtesy and be read as a summons: that the matter of the Al-Zamil name and the Al-Shammari name had been carried far enough, and that it would be settled this morning in his majlis, and that Haifa bint Al-Zamil would attend with her uncle.

I had the folder with me. Still unsigned. I put it in my bag and put the bag on my knee and did not open it in the car.

His house was north, behind a wall that had been built by someone who did not intend to be visited. The wind was taking grit off the top of it in thin ropes.