Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

The private wing was cooler than the majlis and smelled of Oud burned hours earlier and never refreshed, the way a house saves its hospitality for guests it still expects.

I kept the Abaya closed at the front and the Shaila where I had put it at the gate. Two of the outer men walked me to the arch and stopped there, and the house manager came out to meet me with both hands visible and said the Sheikh was inside.

Inside meant the corridor. I made myself see the difference at once: the receiving corridor, long, lit low, its far end closed by a tall banded door. He was not standing near that door. He stood in the middle of the corridor with his weight even on both feet, cuffs buttoned, Thobe ironed white to the collar.

Not the white of a man who has sat in one room for six weeks. Somebody in that house was still pressing his clothes, and nobody presses clothes for a man they have written off.

Behind me, Ammi did not cross the arch.