Without looking up, the clerk asked, "Name?"
"Hadji Ali," Ali answered.
"What?" the clerk asked.
"Hadji Ali," Ali repeated.
The clerk wrote with his goose quill, and, still without looking up, he flipped the book around for Ali's inspection. Unable to read or write, but with no intention of admitting that while the interpreter might overhear, Ali scanned his written name.
"Right?" the clerk asked.
Ali nodded approval. Thus did Hadji Ali cease to be. From that moment, not only as long as he lived but as history would record him after his death, Ali would be known by the name the clerk had written.
It was Hi Jolly.
