Chapter 12 · Chapter 12

The page stayed folded in my sleeve for four days, and the house spent those four days arranging itself around it.

I noticed it the way a woman notices a wall going up at the edge of a garden. The majlis was swept twice. The good Dallah came down off the top shelf and did not go back. On the second day a man walked the whole length of the room with his hands behind his back, looked at where the chairs were set, said nothing to anyone, and left, which is how a house is told there is going to be a committee in it.

On the fourth day, at the end of the light, they came.

My uncle first, in his Bisht, because this was formal and he is a man who likes the room to know what kind of room it is. Then two of the Al-Shehri eldest, men whose names I knew from paper and never from conversation. Then the writer, with the leather folder under his arm and the exact humility of a man who is paid to have no opinion and has become very good at having none.

Turki came last.