“No, I am not saying you are wrong. You are saying it the way you see it. I just have one thing to say . . .”

“If you think I am wrong, you can set me right,” Khader said softly.

Isakki sank back into the chair. “You just spat out whatever came to your mind,” he said gently. “Let me tell you just one thing. Do you see this pen? This pen is not for sale. Not even for the Nizam of Hyderabad. However, I agree that a newspaper has to whore itself out a bit. I don’t deny that. But that does not mean . . .” Isakki wanted to make some emphatic point, but he was now at a loss for words.

“Chee, chee! That’s not what I meant . . .”

“It doesn’t matter how you meant it. I guess it’s just my fate that I should sit here and listen to it.”

“What’s wrong with you? I was just kidding, and you are taking it so seriously. Come on, this is not fair . . .”

“I can’t blame you for thinking what you think. It’s all my old boss’s fault, but I am the one dealing with the consequences. He died, leaving his newspaper and the press to a stupid bitch who was cleaning his house.”

“To the sweeper?”

“Yes, yes! Don’t you know the story? I’ll tell you, but I will try to keep it clean. He and his wife had a big fight. Then she said, ‘All right, old man. I don’t give a damn about you. I am going to live with my children,’ and she packed up and left for Ceylon. Her children were doing really well over there. After that, this fellow set up a stove right in the press, started making his own kanji, and sat scratching the paper trying to come up with editorials. Then he got this boil . . .”

“Who?”

“The owner. On his back. A massive boil. One day he asked her to apply some medicine on it . . .”

“Asked who?”

“Just keep listening . . . She was sweeping the floor in a corner. Then she propped the broom against the wall and attended to his boil.”

Khader gave a little laugh.

Isakki felt encouraged by that.

“Now, once she was done treating the boil, did she really still need to keep her hands on him? Well, she didn’t take her hands away. One day I said to Samuel, the printer, ‘Samuel, she doesn’t seem to take her hands off him.’ And pat came his reply: ‘Isakki, brother, let me put it this way. She didn’t put her hand on him so she could take it off.’”

“How old was he at the time?”

“Just a year or two shy of eighty.”

“And she?”

“Fifty, fifty-five.”

“So what happened next?”