Chapter 16 · Untitled Chapter

I did not sleep, and in the morning I did not run.

There is an easy way out of a house like that, and every woman in it knows the way by heart. You send for your Abaya before the trays come up. You let it be understood that you are unwell, that the heat has taken your appetite, that your family wants you at home.

You are gone before the coffee is poured, and by afternoon your going has become a thing other people explain, and the explanation is never in your favour and never in your mouth.

I have watched women take that road from the gallery. I gave them kind names for it. The one with the sense to go. The one who knew when a room had stopped being hers.

I put on my Abaya and my Tarha and went through the low door in the shared wall at first light, the way I had gone through it for three years, with my hand flat on the old plaster where it dips, so I would not have to look at my feet.

Beyond the door the passage runs over the roof of the storerooms, and the