Chapter 9 · Untitled Chapter

The steward was waiting at the end of the hall with his hands folded, and he had been waiting long enough that he had stopped shifting his weight.

"Ammi asks for you," he said. "The majlis has not been dismissed."

So the room had not ended. It had only been holding its breath.

I went back the way I had come. At the edge of the carpet I stepped out of my shoes and set them side by side, toes to the wall, and I put my hand on the doorframe before I entered, the way I had been taught in this house and not in any other, and I went in with my abaya closed and my tarha where it had been all evening, and I did not look for a place to sit, because there was no place being offered.

The majlis had not thinned. If anything it had filled. The men along the left wall had been joined by two more who had not been there when the gahwa was hot, and they had the look of men who had been sent for and told only that it was worth coming.