Chapter 8 · Chapter 8

After the third round, the room settles into the shape it takes when everyone has decided to be patient in public.

I keep my hands where they were. Left palm flat on the carpet under the edge of my abaya, right hand loose around the finjan, not drinking. My back is straight because straightness is cheap, and it is the only thing in this majlis that costs them nothing to look at.

The bag sits at the corner of the wood where I put it, mouth open, lining eased out an inch. Eleven riyals lie in the middle of the table like a small spill nobody will wipe up. I have left them there on purpose. A woman who gathers her coins is a woman with something to count.

The lipstick has been named and dismissed. The keys have been named and dismissed. The folded receipt from the pharmacy on Olaya has been read aloud twice, once by a woman who cannot read, which was its own small performance. What is left is the lining, and the lining is mine, and the room has been circling it since the second round the way the bakhoor circles a room—