Chapter 11 · Untitled Chapter

The housekeeper did not knock. She opened the door, held it with her shoulder, and kept her eyes on the carpet.

"Sayyidati. The majlis is sitting."

Sitting, in that house, meant waiting. I had learned the difference before I learned to read. A majlis that sits is a room with its teeth together.

I put my abaya on properly, closed it at the front, and pinned the shaila so it would not move when I turned my head. Then I walked down the corridor with my hands at my sides and let the housekeeper go ahead of me, because I did not want her behind my back.

The doors were open. That was the first wrong thing. The majlis doors were never open for this kind of sitting; they were opened afterward, when the matter had already been decided and the carpets needed airing.

The room was full. The men of the family along the right wall, my father's cousins and their grown sons, and the eldest of my father's brothers in the sadr seat with the cushion pushed flat under him. The women had not been sent out.