Ghasem occupies a doorway as if it were a narrow bridge he has been asked to guard: shoulders angled, feet planted, leaving just enough room for one person to pass. He watches the space people leave around him and shifts to make that space smaller when he wants their attention. His movements are measured and economical, but when startled he draws a sharp, audible breath through his teeth, as if a bellows has caught. He has an unexpectedly careful habit of folding scraps of paper into tiny boats and setting them afloat in puddles.

He is sincerely attentive to the suffering of strangers but treats that attentiveness like a tool, quietly steering people toward the conclusions he wants. In calm company he can be dryly funny and almost neighborly; when challenged, he becomes procedural and controlling. A genuine cry for help can break through his practiced composure, while praise for his devotion makes him suspicious rather than pleased.

Ghasem once kept the night watch at a floodgate, where his job was to listen for the change in the water's pitch before the warning bells sounded. During a disastrous spring surge, his superior ordered him to hold the gate shut until the district's wealthy quarter had evacuated. Ghasem heard children trapped on the lower walk and opened it early. The flood saved them and drowned his superior, but the authorities blamed Ghasem for the deaths and dismissed him. Years later, a preacher from the Reed-Eater congregation offered him shelter and a story that made his choice sound sacred rather than merely desperate. Ghasem became a useful recruiter, drawing on his steady watchman's patience and ability to make frightened people feel noticed. He still sends money anonymously to the family of his dead superior, whose son, Yusef, now works as a clerk for the very magistrates who hunt the congregation. Ghasem's present problem is that the cult's leaders intend to sabotage the same floodworks he once guarded. He has begun delaying their plans, while pretending to be their most devoted servant.