Chapter 40 · Chapter 40

The bitter warmth of cardamom lingered on my tongue as I tipped the finjan back into my palm, giving the small cup a slight, deliberate tilt. The server understood the motion at once, bowing his head and retreating into the quiet periphery of the room with the silver dallah held steady against his chest. Not a single drop was spilled across the vast silk carpet.

Beside me, Majed did not shift his stance. He stood with the quiet weight of a man who required neither raised voices nor grand gestures to command the room. In his crisp white thobe, his posture carried that unyielding, ancestral heba—a gravity that made the surrounding men look down toward the embroidered borders of their cushions.

His fingers lightly rested against the curve of his dark amber beads, their rhythm unhurried, marking time in the silent majlis.

Across the U-shaped seating, the elders sat beneath the high archways, their gaze fixed upon the two of us standing together at the Sadr.