“But I wish to tell you about myself,” Abu Faranci said.

“Huh?” My mind had wandered.

“You just described me in a paragraph, sir. But there is more to me than just my laziness.”

“I did not say you were here because of laziness. But even that is a good enough reason for being here. I think this is why I am here, anyway.”

“Ah! Maybe that is why I am here too. Do you know what joie de vivre means?”

“Yes. And I don’t have it.”

“When did you lose it?”

“I may have never had it. But if I did, I’m sure I lost it in Africa.”

“Ah! I lost mine in America. Many Americans have much joie de vivre. It should be illegal.”

“They make the rules. We can’t tell them to stop being so enthusiastic.”

“Well, we French try now and then to tell them. It is a mistake. We should not try.”

I said nothing. I liked this guy. My idea of the French had always been the family my mother had married into after the old man died. The Francophone money of old Tehran, like that pseudo-cousin Avesta. They were of the class that turned their noses up at you for not knowing how to say sympathique with the proper accent. At gatherings they huddled among themselves and babbled in French and talked about the “lovely” party at the French embassy last week and then looked at you with expressions of utter pity when you tried to join in but weren’t fluent enough to understand everything they said. That had been my idea of the French and France, except for a handful of hardened and gritty journalists and photographers I’d run into here and there. But this Claude fellow shattered all my preconceptions. I had expected a different man, full of himself and too suave. I was really waiting with my editor’s eye for him to show me one mistake, just one, so I could throw the manuscript of his life into the dustbin. It would have been that easy. All it would have taken was a simple “I don’t trust this guy” from me to Cleric J, and Abu Faranci would have been done for. It was a scary idea and it was the kind of power that one had in northern Mesopotamia at the time. But Abu Faranci had turned out to be the real thing. Our sympathies were mutual and I found myself wanting to protect him from the evil that lurked around us.

He said, “I had a family. Once.”

“What happened? You lost your joie de vivre with them?”

“Not really. Rather, they found theirs. In America.”

“Well, this should make you happy. No?”

He shrugged. “It did. I found a sort of happiness in that, and then I left to come here.” He stopped and looked at me. “Saleh, maybe you want to do your evening prayer first.”