12That’s how I spent the first months in my grandmother’s house, having three meals a day in the kitchen. The servants avoided me and wouldn’t speak to me in the courtyard but they changed completely once we were together in the kitchen, out of sight of the others. They chatted away and treated me well, except for Raju the driver, who avoided me. He was the only one who didn’t know anything about me, and he wasn’t on good terms with the other servants, who often warned me about him. I began to pick up some simple words of Arabic. I understood some and I would sometimes use Arabic in the same way as the servants in their dealings with the family or among themselves, when they spoke a mixture of English and broken Arabic.
In my room I spent the time watching television or films on DVD or br
