"Again," I replied, my enthusiasm flagging, "I am in the amir's debt. I will look forward to beginning tomorrow."
"The day is not so far spent that you must defer your pleasure," Faysal countered. "Now is the propitious hour for new beginnings."
"As you will," I said, yielding to Faysal's suggestion. Turning to the young man, I indicated the cushions on the floor. "Please, be seated. Let us begin."
Mahmoud bowed slightly from the waist and folded himself onto a cushion, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. "It is an honour for me to instruct you, A'dan," he told me in singing Greek. "My mother was from Thessalonika, thus I have an affinity for the speech of my earliest memory. I think we shall prosper together." He waited for me to ease myself into a sitting position on a cushion, and then said, "We begin."
With this, Mahmoud began saying the letters of the Greek alphabet, interposing them with their Arabic counterparts. Faysal watched for a moment, then left the room with a smile of satisfaction on his face. Thus began a long and arduous grappling for mastery of what must be the world's most insidious speech. Wonderfully fluid and subtle, it is nonetheless fiendishly difficult to utter for one not born to it.
I might have despaired ever succeeding, but from the beginning I determined that I stood a far better chance of rescuing my friends, and taking revenge on Nikos, if I could speak Arabic. It was to Gunnar and Dugal, then, and for vengeance sake, that I dedicated my efforts. Curiously, this determination took hold in me and produced an unexpected result. For as I dwelt on it over the following days, I began to feel different within myself. This feeling festered like a boil on my soul until it suddenly burst. I remember the very moment it happened. I was standing on the roof as the sun went down on another hot, wearisome day; I was watching the dusky reds and lavenders of the sky deepen towards night, and I suddenly thought: I will be a slave no more.
The idea shocked me with its potency. Instantly, as if a long-sealed vessel were shattered, spilling its contents every which way over the floor, thoughts scattered everywhere. Too long had I been the unwitting victim of fate; too long had I meekly accepted as my due whatever those in authority deigned to give me. Too long had I been the dupe of circumstance, the feather blown hither and thither, the leaf tossed on eventful waves. But no more.
I will be free, I thought. Men may rule me, but from now on I will be my own master. I will act, and not be acted upon. From this moment, I am a new man, and I will do what I want.
What did I want? I wanted to see my friends free, of course, and to see Nikos dead, or in their place. But how to do it? The answer did not emerge at once. Indeed, it took me some time to work out how it might be accomplished. When I finally glimpsed the shape of my ambition, it took a form far stranger than any I could have imagined at the time.
Meanwhile, I redoubled my efforts at learning to speak, as Faysal had it, "like a civilized man." In this I did not suffer alone. Through myriad blunderings, failings, mistakes, errors, and confusion, the patient Mahmoud stood by me, commending my feeble progress and patiently correcting my lapses. It could not have been easy for him to sit with me day after day, often in bitter disappointment over his thick-headed pupil's shortcomings. Nor was it easy for me-I cannot count the times I threw myself down gasping with strangled frustration at the difficulty of making sense.
"It is for your own good, A'dan," Mahmoud would say gently, before adding: "The amir wills it." Then, once I had composed myself anew, we would begin again.
My chief and only solace through this interminable ordeal was Kazimain. She continued to bring me my meals each morning and evening-as I could not speak well enough to attend the amir's table, Sadiq had decreed that I take my meals alone in my room. This was not a punishment, I discovered; he treated his own children the same way. I found this out some time after Farouk departed, pronouncing me well enough recovered to be safely left. Employing my feeble abilities, I spoke to Kazimain one evening when she came with my food.
"The days are growing shorter now," I observed mildly.
She lowered her eyes. "Yes," she agreed. "Soon Lord Sadiq will return and you will begin taking your meals at the amir's table. Then you will see Kazimain no more."
"Truly?" I said. It was the first I had heard of anything like this.
She nodded, her head still bent to her work.
"If my speaking Arabic prevents me from seeing you, then I shall pretend not to speak at all."
She glanced up in horror. "You must not!" she warned. "Lord Sadiq would not be pleased."
"But I do not want you to go away. I like seeing you."
She did not look at me, but placed the tray of food on the tripod, turned quickly, and made to leave.
"Wait," I said. "Stay."
