Chapter 8 · Chapter 8

The majlis was full before the Gahwa came.

They had placed themselves the way they always do: the older men along the far wall, the ones with nothing to say nearest the door, and the Sadr left for Majed, who took it without looking at it, the way he took everything that was already his.

I sat where my name put me, which tonight was one seat lower than the night before. I noticed the difference. I did not move to correct it.

The servant came in with the Dallah and poured high from the height of his arm, and the Finjan was less than half full when it reached me. I took it in my right hand. The dates sat at the rim of the saucer. Oud moved off the Mabkhara in a slow sheet, and under it lay the older smell of the house—stone and dust and a great many years of the same conversation.

"You have been seen," Abu Nasser said, "in the eastern wing."

He said it to the room. That is how it is always said.

"Say the rest of it," Majed said.