The city still amazes, frightens, and makes me lose my way, but I’m getting better at asking directions and people say I speak excellent Arabic when I do, which of course is a lie, but I can get around in general and in restaurants I’m served the food and drink that I’ve asked for.
-Letter Home, June 28, 1978
I remember going out to lunch on the hottest day that summer with classmates at a kebab and kofta restaurant in Bab al-Louk and asking for a pitcher of water- I had to ask someone how to say the word for Pitcher- which I drank straight down with the waiter standing right there when a sudden bloom of perspiration poured out of every pore in my body and my fine cotton shirt became sopping wet and he said, Allah huwa Akbar.