“Abdul wants to modernize Assama,” I said. “He is a man of purpose.”

“He is a boy of rash purpose, hell-bent on making us into a pygmy, mock America. If he succeeds, he will destroy us.”

“Then why did you let him let us come in?”

“I am an old man,” he said. “I wanted Abdul back, and this was the only way he’d come. I thought he might change.” Again his deep black eyes sought mine. “Do you think it is possible?” he asked.

It was another question I preferred to leave unexplored. Fortunately I was saved, momentarily, by a bell, a little silver one pealing thinly on the hinge of Daphne’s wrist. She had lately discovered the bells of Chatterton’s lab, and was not above lifting a few.

She traipsed in on us, all tarted up in a kind of see-through sarong. Saeed gestured with an almost imperceptible tilt of his head in the direction from which she had come. Daphne got it and, bell tinkling, traipsed off again. He turned back to me. “What about Abdul?” he asked.

And then, of course, I realized what I was doing there: he wanted to put the find-out on me—whose side was I on, regarding Assama’s future, his or his son’s?

“About Abdul…” I shrugged because I didn’t have an answer. The best I could mumble was, “You’ll have to be patient with him.”

“If only he had a little patience… But he’s become an American, and patience is the least cultivated of American virtues. So,” he added, as if he were trying hard to integrate whatever enlightenment I might provide, “so, what really can you and my son offer us? Our values are so different.”

“Who is to say that one set of ethical standards is superior to another?”

“You do. Or you wouldn’t try to impose yours on us. Matter of fact, some principles of conduct are certainly better than others.”

“Ours for us, yours for you.”

“Generally, yes, but there are exceptions. Some of our most disturbed people embrace your values—Hashim Pachachi is obsessed by commerce, General Qazwini is preoccupied with guns. And they’re not alone.”

I nodded. “We’re all hooked on one damn thing or another. We are all full of discontents.”

“How’d we get that way?” he asked. “Was the whole human race irreparably flawed from the beginning? Genetically?”

I shrugged, lacking answers to his quiz, and somewhat confused by his rather formal lucidity in my language.