I stood silent, so he tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Are you one of the palace guards?” Unsuppressed by my monosyllabic “No,” he persisted by saying, “What’s your business, then?” jingling his coins again. “Stop pulling me, Mai,” he added, as an aside.
“I am a stranger in Tangier,” I answered quietly.
“From whereabouts?” he questioned.
“The East.”
“Oh, you’re one of the wise men, are you?” he observed jocosely. “Are you a Jew or a Mohammedan?”
“Not the latter, fortunately for you.”
“And why fortunately?” he nagged.
“Because a true believer would have taken the question as a deadly insult.”
“They’d be welcome,” he laughed, “though it is rather irritating to be mistaken for a Jew. I shouldn’t like it myself.”
I thought of the dignified Jew traders who had made part of our caravan in the journey from Bagdad to Damascus, and answered, “There is little danger of that.”