“I don’t speak English,” he said in Turkish.

I do speak Turkish, but I thought it might be worthwhile to keep this a secret. “Just a book or a magazine,” I said in English. “Even an old newspaper.”

In Turkish he said, “Your mother loves to perform fellatio upon syphilitic dogs.”

I took the proffered plate of pilaff. “Your fly is open,” I said in English.

He looked down immediately. His fly was not open, and his eyes focused reproachfully on me. “I don’t speak English,” he said again in Turkish. “Your mother spreads herself for camels.”

Dogs, camels. He went away, and I ate the pilaff and wondered what had led them to arrest me, and precisely why they were holding me, and if they would ever let me go. My guard pretended he could not speak English, and I feigned ignorance of Turkish. The high window turned alternately blue and black, the guard brought toast and pilaff and pilaff, toast and pilaff and pilaff, toast and pilaff and pilaff. The chamber pot began to approach capacity, and I amused myself by calculating just when it would overflow and by trying to imagine how I might bring this to the attention of a guard who refused to admit to a knowledge of English. Would either of us lose face if we talked in French?

The pattern changed, finally, on my ninth day in jail, a Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday-I’d lost a day somewhere-but it turned out that I was wrong. I had my usual breakfast, paid my usual tribute to my chamber pot, and performed a brief regimen of setting-up exercises. An hour or so after breakfast I heard footsteps in the hallway. My guard unlocked my door, and two uniformed men came into my cell. One was very tall, very thin, very much the officer. The other was shorter, fatter, sweaty, and moustached, and possessed an abundance of gold teeth.