Chapter Nine
Ama al-Rahman always showed up eventually, right under the nose of people in the most conservative country in the world.
With microscopic attention, and complete infatuation, I followed her from the moment she stepped off the bus until she knocked on my door.
The strangest thing: the compound office manager and doorman nodded a respectful greeting to her when she arrived. You’d think they would have considered her daily visits to my flat immoral, and that it was their job to prevent a scandal. That was how things normally worked in this arid city, conservative to its marrow.
How did I manage this? How did I justify it? How did she hypnotise them and pull them under her sway? Did she have a flat of her own in the complex? Did she go there when I wasn’t around?
I’ll never k
