Chapter 6 · Chapter 6

The room did not empty when the door shut. It only changed its shape. Chairs scraped back and were set down again at a different angle, the Dallah went round a second time, and the talk that had been one thing at the table became six quiet things along the walls and then worked its way back inward.

I put the ledger on the table in front of me and squared it to the edge, and left my hand flat on the cover.

"Hanan." My uncle, from the far side, where the light gives out early in the afternoon. "Sit down."

"I am sitting."

"Not there."

There is one seat at the head of this majlis and it has never been mine. He knew that. I knew he knew it, and he said it to see what my face would do. I let my face do nothing.

"Then say it from where you are," he said. "The room has been patient with you."

"The room can be patient a while longer."

A man two seats down set his finjan on the table with a click that was meant to carry.