Chapter 18 · Chapter 18

The door of the private wing was not slammed. It was drawn, and then it was shut, and the man who drew it did it from the corridor side, so the last thing I saw of the majlis was a strip of carpet and the edge of a chair where a witness had been sitting.

Then the sound of it, and then the quiet.

I did not move. The Abaya was still on me, the Tarha still pinned at my shoulder, the pin biting a little where I had set it that morning in a hurry. I stood with my back to the wall and my hands at my sides and I looked at him.

He crossed the room without hurrying. He put the lamp where the light would fall on me and not on himself, and then he stood, and he did not touch me, and in that house a man standing still with a lamp behind him is louder than a man shouting.

"You understand what was stopped in there," he said.

"I understand it."

"Then say it in your own words, so I know what I have bought.