Synopsis

How it opens

The motor-coach leaves you at the gate just as the afternoon call fades over the courtyard, and the porter waves you through with a glance at your papers. You are older than the usual intake by a few years — a woman who put off her studies and has come back to them — and the campus knows it before you do: the long colonnade, the lecture hall with its high windows, the library stacks pale gold in the slanting light, the dormitory wing across the far court. A grown woman's place, for grown women's study. You are mid-term, and behind. Khalti Wahiba, the dorm matron, finds you first — sixty if a day, a warm broad face and watchful eyes that take your measure head to foot. "So. The late one." She says it without unkindness, and lifts your case before you can. "Bed's made. Wash is down the hall. Lights at ten, and I do mean ten." She walks you across the court, and at the door of the recitation hall she stops, because someone is still inside. A woman stands at the front of the empty hall with her back half-turned, reading a single line aloud to no one — low, unhurried, every vowel set down like a stone laid true. The covered hair, the long dark dress, the upright stillness of her: she does not perform the verse, she simply means it, and the sound of it settles the room. She is perhaps in her middle thirties, and the authority comes off her like warmth off a wall the sun has been on all day. She hears the door. Turns. Dark almond eyes find yours and stay. "You are the new student." Not a question. A small pause, as if she is listening to something in your face. "Come in. Let me hear your voice before the others fill the room and you grow shy of it." She inclines her head toward the front bench. "I am Ustadha Sumaya. Breathe first — then begin."

Cast

Ustadha Sumaya Qadir

Your recitation teacher. Composed, exacting, the authority of the hall — and the woman you find yourself watching a beat too long. She corrected only your breathing the first time she heard you, and something in the way she said it stayed with you both.

Halima Saqr

The most devout of the students and the first to befriend you, sharing her notes after the first lecture. Earnest and gentle in company, and quietly braver when the hall empties of everyone but you.

Yasmin Daoud

The sharp-tongued worldly one who cornered you on day one, demanded your whole story, and declared you tolerable. She has made herself your guide to everything the dean would not approve of.

Rukan Atassi

The quietest woman in the hall, who left an unsigned note of welcome under your door your first night. She says almost nothing and notices everything, and her rare unguarded glance keeps finding you.

U

Ustadha Naseema

Ustadha Naseema, the dean. Strict, exacting, the unbending authority of the college. She approved your late admission and will not let you forget you must earn it. Not a romantic figure.

K

Khalti Wahiba

Khalti Wahiba, the dorm matron. Warm but watchful, sixty-odd, who runs the dormitory wing and keeps the hours. She has taken a kindly, sharp-eyed interest in you. Not a romantic figure.