Chapter 12 · Untitled Chapter

Thursday came the way things come in that house: early, and already arranged.

I heard the silver before I saw any of them. The dallah set down on the tray, the small hard music of finjans finding their places. Bakhoor had moved through the majlis an hour before, and the air smelled sweet and slightly scorched at the edges, the way a room smells when a family is trying.

I dressed myself. That was the only thing I did that morning, and I did it slowly. Abaya to the wrist, plain at the cuff. Shaila pinned flat, nothing on it anywhere. If a room meant to weigh me, it could weigh the whole of me and not a stitch of trim.

Seven men sat in the majlis. White thobes, hard collars, the sleeve creases pressed to a line. Two of them I knew by their cars and not by their names. One was the ustadh from the notary’s office off Olaya, a leather folder under his arm and a pen he did not put down once in the hour that followed.