‘Don Diego knows Arabic’, Chapuys offers. He is alert. ‘Does it take years to learn?’ ‘Yes,’ Don Diego says. ‘Years and years.’
-The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
My three years of classroom Arabic followed by a year on Cairo’s streets didn’t help me much in Dar al-Kababish. Shaynu, Waynu, Minu…What, Where, Who…these were new words to me, neither Classical, Modern Standard, nor Egyptian Colloquial, so I was unable to answer KhairAllah’s questions when he rejoined the herd one day at dawn after being away for the night and found a number of our camels missing in the morning count. What happened to them? Where did they go? Who is their thief? I had been asleep so I could only say, Al-Nayyim Huwa Sultān, The Sleeper is a Sultan.