Chapter 12 · Chapter 12

The door was heavier than it looked. He set his shoulder to it without hurry and it gave with the sound of a held breath let go.

The wing was cool. One lamp burned low on a brass tray, and the Mabkhara beside it had been smoking a long while; the oud had gone into the walls, the cushions, the cold air coming off the courtyard window. A Dallah stood on the tray with two Finjans, and dates in a shallow bowl, and I understood that someone in this house had been told to prepare a room and had prepared it well without being told for whom.

He did not go in first. He stood aside and let me cross the threshold, and only when I was inside did he follow and put his palm flat to the door and push it shut.

The latch was drawn from the corridor. A hand, no face. Then footsteps going away, unhurried, and then nothing at all, and the wing went as quiet as a page.

I did not turn round straight away.