Chapter 2 · Chapter 2

The ledger comes out again on the second night.

I know before the steward sets it down. The uncle came in early and did not take the seat by the window and did not take the seat at the Sadr's left where he usually leans his stick, and a man who seats himself in the middle of a room has something he wants the middle of the room to hear.

Gahwa first. The pour comes high out of the Dallah and the Finjan takes less than half, and the steward carries it to the Sadr, then to the uncle, then down the row. I take mine with my right hand, set one date at the rim, and wait, because the eldest has not drunk.

The uncle does not drink. He holds the cup, looks at the ledger, and then opens it himself, which is not his to do, and the room hears the cover go back.

The first page. He reads the name the way a man reads something he has already read twice in private.

"Reem," he says. "Reem of which house?"

Nobody answers. Behind him the young ones study their cups. Beside me the steward has gone still with the Dallah in his hand.

"She left," the uncle says. "Three winters, four. The coast, they say, or the east. Nobody in this room has seen her since her father's funeral, and half of this room was not at the funeral."

He turns the page so the hall can see the witness line, and the hand on it.

The hand is mine. Nobody looks at it. Nobody has ever looked at it.

"Who received the mahr written here?" he says.

The silence takes on a shape. Two of the men glance at Turki. Turki is not drinking either, and he is not looking at the page, and he is not looking at his uncle, and the whole length of the majlis has understood that whatever is settled tonight will be settled by the man who has said nothing.

"A page with no woman behind it is a courtesy," the uncle says. "I am not against courtesy. I am against a house that runs on it. Strike the entry. Begin again at the second."

The Mabkhara comes to him and he draws the smoke to his collar with one hand and waits, because he believes he has already finished.

"Ya ustadh."

My voice is steady, which surprises me. The room turns. Every face in it comes round to the far end, where I sit with my Abaya closed to the floor and my Shaila pinned at the collarbone.

"The first entry is Reem's," I say. "She signed it. She paid the price written beside it out of her own hand and not out of this house, and then she left, because a woman who has paid that much is not obliged to stay and watch what the payment bought."

The cup comes down on the brass.

"And what did it buy?" he says.

"A name," I say. "The name on the second page. Not hers."

It is true. It is the only true thing I have said in this room in a year, and it is true in the way that costs nothing at all, because I have just handed the first year of my life to a woman who is not in the city and cannot be asked a single question about it.

The uncle studies me the way he studies a clause he does not like.

"You speak well for her," he says. "For a woman who is not here."

"I speak for the page," I say. "The page is in this house. She is not. Somebody should be accurate about the difference."

Someone at the far end laughs, one short breath, and does not do it twice.

Turki shakes his Finjan once. The steward's pour stops.

That is all. He does not raise his voice and he does not look at his uncle, and the hall reads it the way a hall reads weather.

"The first entry stands," he says. "As written. It is not struck, and it does not come up in this room again."

The uncle's jaw works. "Turki—"

"Inshallah," Turki says.

The word comes out flat and cold. It is not a hope and it is not a blessing, and the uncle hears exactly what everyone else hears, and closes his mouth, and lifts his cup, and drinks.

The room loosens by degrees. Business comes back into it — the northern land, a cousin's permit, something about the road and the lights on it. I hold my Finjan and do not drink and answer twice when I am asked, in the short way, and both times the answer is about a woman who is not in the city.

When they go, they go past the Sadr, the uncle first now, and the steward holds the door and the men take their shoes at the carpet's edge and put them on in the corridor. I stand last, because I always stand last, and no one watches me do it.

At the threshold Turki stops, which he has never done, and does not turn around.

"The first page," he says, quietly, to the corridor. "The hand on it is not Reem's."

Then he is gone, three steps and a wall, and the door is closed by the steward's hand and not mine.

I stand in the empty majlis with my hands inside my sleeves where nobody can see them shake, and I understand that I have not been careful enough, and that a man who has found the hand on the page will not be satisfied until he has the woman who wrote it.