Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

Sunday arrived without a bell. It arrived as more cars.

By the time mine turned in at the gate, the drive was lined nose to tail with black, drivers standing out in the last of the heat with their phones held up against the light, and the gate lamps already on, because the sky over this part of Riyadh goes orange before it goes dark. The house manager stood at the inner step.

He took my bag and said nothing, and I said Ya'teek al-afiyah, and he nodded as though I had said something better than I had.

I took my shoes off at the carpet's edge, letting the hem of my black abaya fall straight to the floor. The majlis had been aired since noon and still held the Bakhoor in its heavy curtains. Oud, and under it the older smell of the house itself: dust and cool stone and cardamom gone faint in the corners.

They had come. Not the four who always came, but the others, the ones who send a son to look first and arrive themselves only when the ledger is worth arriving for.