Chapter 10 · Chapter 10

Ammi stopped at the edge of the courtyard and let the house settle before he spoke, which is what men of that generation do when they want a walk to feel like a decision.

"You have the page," he said.

"I have the page."

"Then you know what is at the end of this."

I knew what the page said. It said that Talal Al-Zahrani had not left this house in forty-one days. It said the file on the northern land had gone to another desk, that two committees had sat twice without him, and that the hall had begun to use a particular word for him, and used it quietly, which is worse.

It said nothing about the courtyard, or the blinds, or the fact that every chair in that majlis had been arranged around a seat nobody was using.

Ammi had a cup in his hand, and he had not drunk from it. He held it the way a man holds a thing he intends to put down and keep talking about.

"He does not receive," he said. "Six weeks.