Chapter 12 · Chapter 12

The clerk turned the ledger around so the page faced the room, though from where we sat no one could read a word of it except the shape of the writing, and turning it was the whole of the courtesy. Then he set the stamp down beside the inkwell and left it lying there.

The majlis changed. Not in sound — the sound went the other way, the low talk along the wall thinning until the only things moving were the brass under the burner and the smoke going up off it in one slow thread, oud with the bakhoor sitting under it. Thirty people turning their faces at once makes no noise at all. It makes a pressure, and the pressure had my name in it.

I stayed as I was. The abaya was over me and the tarha was where it should be, and my hand was around the finjan at the height of my knee, and I did not set it down, because a woman who puts her cup on the carpet in a room like this has agreed to be looked at with both hands free.

Sayyidati, the clerk said. The finding is drawn.