Chapter 5 · Chapter 5

The majlis keeps last night's Oud until the sun is high. At nine it is still there, sitting under the coffee, patient as an unpaid bill.

I take the third cushion from the head of the room. Not the head itself. Nobody has to tell me twice this morning, and nobody tells me once.

The record lies open on the low table, the first stage ruled off in pencil at the margin. The clerk from yesterday stands over it with his pen capped, and the room fills the wait the way rooms do — a road out past the north gate, a mare gone lame, the price of a permit. In this house that is how a man is discussed when he has not come down yet.

Turki comes down at a quarter past.

The room comes up off the cushions by half an inch. He does not ask for it and does not seem to notice it happening, and he takes the head of the room the way a man takes his own chair in his own house.

The steward is there before he is settled, Dallah in his left hand, tilted high, and the coffee