Chapter 6 · Chapter 6

The majlis had been swept twice. I could tell by the lines the broom had left in the pile of the carpet, running neat and parallel toward the sadr, and by the fact that a second sweeping had erased the first. Someone had wanted the room to look as though nobody had prepared it at all.

They had burned Oud at four and let the windows stand open until the heat went out of the day, and by six the room had closed itself again, holding the scent low and close the way these rooms hold everything.

I stood at the door with my abaya straight and my shaila drawn, my hands folded where they could be seen. It was not my majlis and no one had offered me a cushion, which was the point of my being there.

They came in ones and twos, the elders, greeting each other with the long greeting and then the shorter one, and they took the sadr without discussion, the way water takes the low ground. Abu Nasser first, because he was oldest and because he had been careful all his life to be oldest in rooms where age is worth something.