She clasped her hands between her knees and cast her eyes upward as if in deep thought. "Ah, well, our churches are huge and magnificent."
"So are our mosques."
"Our paintings and mosaics and statues of saints and angels and emperors are the most beautiful in the world."
"Idols," he interrupted, but he turned to her and smiled as she had. "The Prophet ordered idols destroyed."
"And therefore the art of painting languishes among you," she said, poking her forefinger into his shoulder. "Someday I will show you my paintings if you promise not to destroy them."
His shoulder tingled where she had touched him. She must have been carried away by her feelings about the arts of her homeland to make such a gesture. Surely it could not have been deliberate. His hand rested between them on the edge of the fountain. He moved a bit closer to her so that the edge of his hand nearly touched her thigh.
He nodded. "I will teach you the art of calligraphy as my Sufi master practiced it, and save your soul."
I would really like to do that. Ah, but I cannot teach her to write Arabic. What if someone were to see her practice work?
He sighed inwardly.
"Hm," she grunted. "I doubt that you can save my soul. But as for writing, we are familiar with dramatists like Sophocles, philosophers like Aristotle. We read Latin poets like Ovid, whose book I just gave to Rachel. Here in his native Italy his work is thought licentious."