Chapter 7 · Chapter 7

"Out," my uncle said.

He did not raise his voice. He put the word on the table the way a man sets down something heavy he has been carrying too long, and the men at the far end of the majlis began to gather their weight before they had finished deciding whether to obey.

I did not move. My abaya was still over my clothes, the tarha still where I had knotted it at my throat when I came in, and I had not shifted in my chair since the register came out of its cabinet. There was no reason to shift now.

The cousins went. Two of them I could name; the third I had sat beside in a schoolroom, and he had the grace not to look at me as he reached the door. One of the older men stopped near my uncle and said something with his hand up by his chest, and my uncle did not answer him, and the not answering was the answer.

Shoes at the threshold. The door pulled to.