Chapter 19 · Untitled Chapter

I came down the last eight steps of the gallery with my abaya gathered in one hand, and the house did not stop for me, because a house like this one never stops for anyone.

Below, in the majlis, the gahwa had gone cold in the dallah and no one had thought to order more. Two men I had named the Falcon and the Younger Brother were standing with their shoulders turned in a way I had never seen them stand. A third was folding a paper he had not finished reading.

The carpets still smelled of oud from the evening before, and the finjans still held their rings, and every one of those things was exactly as it had been, which is how I knew that the minute had done its work and gone.

I had given them four months of names. The Falcon, the Younger Brother, the one I called the Quiet Uncle because he never spoke before the second pot. I had written the names in my book with a pencil and kept the book in the gallery where the light was bad and no one came to look.