Chapter 15 · Untitled Chapter

The women's passage runs the length of the great room, behind it, and the length of it is lattice. Old Riyadh work, cut fine as a comb, so that the hall on the far side is a bright blur with voices moving around inside it.

I stopped halfway down.

I had not meant to stop. My Abaya was still gathered in one fist so the hem would not drag on the tiles, and I could smell the Oud I had carried out of the gallery on my sleeve, and the door to the lower stair stood four paces on. But the lattice was at my shoulder, and beyond the lattice the majlis was ending, and I am a woman who looks. It is the one habit no one in that hall had thought to take off me.

The guests were going in the slow way guests go when the coffee has been good. The Dallah sat at the host's right hand with its long beak at rest, and the attendant who had poured for three hours had finally put his own weight on his back foot.