Chapter 18 · Chapter 18

He said my name, and the room turned over.

He set the finjan down first. The dallah rang once against the tray, the dates shifted at the rim of the plate, and only after that did he come across the carpet, unhurried, and stop where the light from the high window lay between us like something poured.

"Mariam. Come inside."

Beyond the corridor the majlis was still full of men who had spent the evening agreeing with each other that Talal Al-Zahrani was finished. I had been brought to that room to see it. I had brought a folder with a seal on it and my own name signed at the foot of the last page, and I had intended to go home respectable.

I looked at the folder in my hands.

"Yes," I said. "And ask me again when we are standing in it."

He did not smile. He opened the wing door himself and held it, and I went past him.

The corridor was long and lit low. The under-steward walked ahead of us without being told, and at the wing he pulled the door and it closed from the outside —