Chapter 10 · Chapter 10

The hall was fuller for the second stage than it had been for the first. Word moves through Riyadh faster than a car does, and by four o'clock the row of chairs along the wall had filled with men who had not been invited to anything, and the Dallah in my hand weighed what it always weighs after the third round.

I poured high, right hand, and stopped the finjan short of half. Dates at the cup's edge. The man I gave it to took it without looking up from his phone, which is the ordinary courtesy of this city and not an insult, though I had been awake most of the night deciding it was.

The second stage was on the table by then. I had written her as a woman who asked to be written down — a name entered somewhere that would outlast the mood of the man entering it. Not a wedding. Nothing so tidy.