Chapter 18 · Untitled Chapter

The book was still open at my page when the light came up behind the mashrabiya and laid its stripes across the floor.

I had not written on it. I had turned the cup instead, three times, until the cardamom went flat, and then I had set it down on the tray with the date stone beside it and left it there like a sentence I had decided against.

Four months. I know how long because the book has four months in it, one page for each week, and every page has a name on it that I made with my own hand. The man of the third cup. The man who comes with the sun and sets his papers on the sadr before the room can see him do it, and does it anyway, as if being seen were the point.

The side branches who lower their heads without being told. The boy who carries the tray and is never thanked. I gave them all names that fit them like a thobe cut to measure, and I was proud of the cut, and I was wrong.

I did not sleep.