Chapter 11 · Untitled Chapter

I sat with the empty finjan until the last of them had gone.

The hall gave up its noise in pieces — a chair pushed back, a cough, the outer door, cars turning on the gravel. Then the quiet came down and the majlis settled into the smell it always keeps after a long sitting: oud gone thin, cardamom, cold air winning at last.

I stood. I did not look at the floor.

A boy came for the cups and I gave him mine with my right hand. "Ya'teek al-afiyah," I murmured, keeping my voice level. He carried the tray out and stepped around the carpet where the paper lay, and I thought: even the boy has learned the arithmetic of this house.

At the head of the corridor, under the light, Faisal was waiting.

He had not gone home. He stood with one shoulder against the wall, thobe straight, no bisht, his hands loose at his sides — the hands that had sworn in front of thirty men and then walked out without explaining a word of it. He did not come toward me.