Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

The boy came for the cups, and the elder let him come, and that told me the room was not finished with me.

He waited until the tray had gone and the door had been drawn to. Then he reached down beside his knee for a folder the colour of weak tea, wound shut with tape, and set it on the carpet between us, squared to the edge of the rug, so that it lay exactly halfway.

"Ya ustadh," I said. "You have been sending for the boy all evening. I thought you were finished."

"The coffee was finished," he said. "This is not."

He let the room settle. There were seven men on the long cushions and one empty place at the far end of the Sadr that no one had taken and no one had moved toward, and the wing door stood closed at the back of the hall with its brass plate catching the light, the way it had stood all evening, the way it had stood for years, doing nothing at all but being shut.

"You have been shown the city," he said.