Thurayya’s cheeks reddened and her blood pressure rose. She gave a signal for Mary to get on with bringing out the coffee so that the masses might “get off my imported carpets and my velvet couches” as soon as possible. Then she made up her mind that, for the funeral on the following day, she would put out chairs on the landing, which was large enough to hold any number of people. The mourners would be many, and the apartment wasn’t big enough for all of them. In the early morning, wooden and wicker chairs arrived in a truck that stopped at the entrance to the narrow street. They were carried up just four flights of stairs and arranged in rows, side by side, in front of small, low tables bearing ashtrays and boxes of white facial tissues. Thurayya directed Mary to greet new arrivals in front of the apartment at the top of the stairs, and to seat “those people” outside, on the landings, while respectable people of any standing would be brought into the salon. She summoned two waiters to take over Mary’s normal role of preparing and serving coffee.

N went out to the landing, and no one in the salon called him back. He sat beside Mary, not talking and not telling anyone that he had witnessed his father’s suicide. He hid the matter for a long time; he was still hiding it now. For his father to have killed himself in N’s presence was too much to endure. For his father to have let go of N’s little hand forever and jumped; for his father to have left N sitting in the corner, just like that, and jumped; for his father to know that N had no real family but him and yet still to jump; for his father to know that he was forever abdicating the role of N’s father, ensuring that N would never again be a son to anyone for the rest of his life.