Chapter 9 · Untitled Chapter

The courtyard doors take three men to shut at dusk. Teak, and old, and the left leaf has hung a finger's width low since before I began coming here, so it must be lifted before it will meet the stone. For eleven evenings the same three men have lifted it and the same complaint has gone round them like a coin. Tonight it closes without complaint. Someone has oiled the hinge and told nobody.

I write that down, because a house that fixes a hinge without mentioning it is a house that has already decided something.

I put it in the back column, where the small changes go, and I date it.

Below me the majlis is doing what a majlis does at the end of a day: it is sorting itself. The men with somewhere else to be leave first and are not asked to stay. Then the men with nowhere else to be leave, and are asked, and refuse, and are asked again, and go. Then the last few settle, the Gahwa comes round a second time, and the room changes key. This is the hour I come for.