The boys walked downstairs with Hassan, since it was faster than taking the elevator, and went to the alley behind the hotel where he had parked his car.
The car was a small foreign sedan of a make neither boy had ever heard of. Apparently Hassan also used it as a taxi, because the front passenger seat was taken up mostly by a taxi meter.
Rick showed Hassan the address in his notebook. The guide shook his head. "Please, you read."
Rick looked at him with astonishment. A guide who couldn't read? But apparently it was so. "It is the store of Ali Moustafa," he explained.
Hassan shrugged. "I do not know it. But it can be found. Enshallah."
Although the boys did not recognize it then, the word was a common expression meaning "If God wills it."
They would learn it, though, and with it other Arabic words, including zanb, dassissa, and khatar—or, in English, crime, intrigue, and danger!