Chapter 10 · Untitled Chapter

The lattice let through more than the room thought it did. It let through the sound of a man's palm settling flat on the table, and the smaller sound of a ring turning against the wood.

My uncle's hand was out. Palm up, fingers open, the way a man holds out his hand for a thing that is already his.

"Give it back," he said. "We are finished with it."

The room did not answer him. The coffee had come and gone twice already. The tray sat at the head, the dallah still breathing a thin thread of steam at the spout, and the servant had retreated to his place by the door with his eyes fixed on the carpet, because in this house a man could ask for a page and the room would wait to see whether the page agreed with him.

Faisal Al-Mutairi did not give it back.

He took the sheet—my name on it, my number, my own words recorded in a clerk's clean hand—